The Ancients From Alchera
by Ignisami
Summary: The frozen wastes of Alchera hold a secret that would change the face of the galaxy. The Collectors failed to kill Shepard and her impact on Alchera's surface woke the secret up. What will happen now?
1. Chapter 1

**The Ancients from Alchera**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or Naruto. They belong to Bioware and Masashi Kishimoto, respectively. **

**This was a plot bunny that got stuck in my head a few days ago, and I _had_ to write it out because it was keeping me from studying for my exams. **

**Updated 2014-12-06  
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– – – – – –

It was supposed to be a routine scouting patrol for any remaining Geth-related activity. They would move into the system, scan the planets, and move on to the next system if everything was green.

She should've known it would be messed with somehow. A routine day on Mindoir turned into hell, a routine vacation to Elysium turned to hell, _may the gods damn the Batarians_, a route pick-up to Eden Prime turned into hell, though this time Batarians were not involved, and so when this was supposed to be a routine scouting mission she should've been preparing for Armageddon. But she didn't, and this ship had appeared and gave Joker, of all people, problems dodging its attacks. Shortly after that they were hit and shit really started to hit the fan.

As explosions ripped through the Normandy Joker didn't want to leave his seat so she had to get him out of there. Quite understandable really, if only a_ smidge_ annoying. The Normandy was Joker's baby and like a proud father he didn't want to leave his baby. Unlike an actual baby, _this_ baby was dead but didn't know it yet.

She'd barely been able to get Joker into an escape pod and hit eject when the explosion tore through the cockpit and what little atmosphere it still contained.

It ripped straight through her, smashed her into a support beam that was floating around, then into the remnants of the hull before sucking her out into the vacuum of space.

The most terrifying thing about it all was that it had all been absolutely silent. She knew, rationally, that the silence was due to the vacuum of space, but being hurled throughout a ship by the shockwave of a silent explosion into a support beam, then the remnants of the roof of the CIC, and _then_ out into spae in perfect silence was unsettling.

And then the hissing began. It only took her a moment to realize that the only hissing that wouldn't immediately result in her death due to decompression was a leak in her oxygen hose, a leak she desperately tried to close. A few extra seconds of oxygen was all she got as she realized she didn't have an armour repair kit on her and she started plummeting towards Alchera's frozen surface.

She realized it would take a miracle for her to survive. She was plummeting toward the planet from high orbit with a broken oxygen hose and no suit-repair kit on hand, ejected from a dying ship with its last, explosive, breath, and all she could do now was familiarize herself with Death.

She raged inside her suit. She hadn't survived the raid on Mindoir to die in the inky blackness of space! She hadn't persisted through the Blitz to perish near a godforsaken backwater planet! She yelled at Death itself that it wouldn't take her that easily even as her body started lighting up from orbital entry.

Miraculously, she was lucid enough shortly before she crashed to send the biggest pulse of biotics she could muster towards the ground. She wasn't an Adept by any means, but as a Sentinel she did receive training in the basics of biotics. It didn't get much more basic than a giant pulse in one direction to slow oneself down.

Even with the biotic brake she still slammed into the Alchera ice with unimaginable force, screaming. Not a scream from pain or fear, but a roar of righteous rage.

She vaguely felt two furred arms close around her before she passed out from the sudden searing pain lancing throughout her body.

– – – –

She was drifting on the endless tides of the ocean. She'd always liked the sea despite her predilection for fire. The gentle rolling sound of waves hitting the shore never failed to soothe her, reminding her of home. _Home_, she thought with a nostalgic sigh. _When times were simpler. _

Home, where she was loved unconditionally by her parents. The home that was destroyed by those damned tree-huggers when she was seven, prompting her to start living amongst the clouds. It was then that her fondness for fire got started. Fire burned wood, after all. For a while, among the cloud-people, she found acceptance, friends, and met a boy that she hoped she would spend the rest of her life with.

And then the damned tree-huggers took him too when she was ten. Disillusioned with life, she accepted the burden the leader of the cloud-people offered her; housing the hell-cat. It soon become her own nickname as she sought the vengeance her broken heart told her to seek. The Hell-Cat of the Cloud was a name she wore with pride, a promise of death unto her enemies, a promise of vengeance unto the trees for claiming the lives of the people she would gladly sacrifice herself for, those who she would gladly kill for.

In the ensuing decade, she drove away her friends in her single-minded pursuit of vengeance, until the leader of the cloud-people gave her her very own students. Students that she was explicitly told were _not_ to die alongside her in her ever-lasting quest for vengeance. She supposed she could do that, she was entrusted with the favoured niece of her leader and letting such a person die would be... She didn't have words to accurately describe the disaster that would follow such an event.

It was around this time that she met one of her fellows who also had a burden; circumstances had kept them apart for the decade prior but he swiftly became that annoying older brother that she'd always wanted. Her students soon added their own efforts to thaw her nearly-frozen heart and became the younger siblings that adored her simply because she was older, and therefore wiser. Within a few short years they would no longer revere her, but they would always respect her and they would always remain her younger siblings.

Her surrogate brother's students became like her own nieces and nephew. And then she met _him _on a diplomatic mission to the damned tree-huggers. At first, she'd discarded his presence; he was a tree-hugger, he was loud, he was annoying, and he wore that orange eye-sore. But he simply _didn't leave her alone!_ Being the favoured surrogate grandson of the Grand Hippie, the leader of the tree-huggers as she called him, granted him some protection because the clouds weren't keen to start war with the tree-huggers. She hit him hard a few times regardless simply because he was so annoying he reminded her of her annoying older brother. But where her surrogate brother would spout bad rap and rhyme, though pretty damn good poetry if he set his mind to it, he would simply talk to her end on end without stopping about nothing and everything at once!

When she learned that _he_ had more in common with her annoying brother than just being annoying, that he had a burden of his own similar to her and her brother's and that that was the reason he hung around her so much because he knew she was like him as soon as he saw her, she decided to at least make him _slightly_ less annoying by buying him a new wardrobe. She didn't dare trust him to do it himself, he said he was an unadopted orphan and the last unadopted orphan she met with good fashion sense was two months before she was conceived. That is, never.

It was an eye-opening experience. She always thought that tree-huggers prided themselves on teamwork, on _unity._ Mess with one, mess with them all... when it came to him, she was wrong. The first clothing store they walked into, he was kicked out of none too gently. She had great fun scaring the ever-living hell out of the storeowner in retaliation. A tree-hugger was a tree-hugger and she didn't rightly care if the one she scared or killed was civilian or military. Politics demanded she scare him, not kill him, though.

It was fun regardless, and made her see him less as annoying by choice like her older brother but more annoying because he was never told just how annoying he was. She wasn't rightly sure when exactly she saw him as her younger brother, but if she would have to put one specific date on it, she would say it was then. She took it upon herself to teach him properly how society worked, all sorts of social cues that he was simply never aware of due to being an orphaned pariah.

He left soon after with his sensei, one of the few tree-huggers she respected that still lived, on an extended training trip and she was recalled back to the clouds.

For a year or so, life went on as usual. She undertook mission for the clouds, she sparred with her students, she trained her body to perfection and attained a new level of understanding and friendship with her burden following a warning by _his_ sensei that a group of seriously powerful, shady people were after her hide. No, not _her _hide, her _burden_'s hide, though she couldn't rightfully call her burden a burden any longer. Not after the understanding they had gained.

When the so-called Zombie Duo came, Kakuzu of the Five Heart and Hidan the Jashinist, they were expecting a powerhouse. They were expecting someone that would sling waves of destruction at them, which they could take and outlast.

They never expected her to fight like a hell-cat empowered ninja. She had them on the ropes, Kakuzu was down to a single heart and Hidan's head was somewhere miles away after she decapitated him and kicked away his head with all the strength she had that wouldn't outright destroy the head because as long as the limb or body part in question was intact, it wouldn't regenerate.

And then _that bastard_ came. Or rather, one of six bastards with the Eyes of the Sage. He flat-out overpowered her, _her_!, and took her captive as the Zombie Duo he had sent had intended to do. She blacked out from the exhaustion of the long fight with the three obscenely powerful ninja.

She would later learn that she was kept unconscious for three months. They didn't extract her burden as she thought they intended, they didn't rape her while she was out – she didn't know whether to be offended at that or not, she was always deemed highly desirable by any hormonal male she met but here was a group of nine men that didn't even so much as push her shirt and bra out the way –, they simply kept her 'on ice'.

When they finally did move to extract her burden, her _friend_, they were interrupted by _him_. He was still blond, still loud, still annoying, but she subconsciously moved him out of the 'surrogate brother' category into the 'potential boyfriend/husband' category because he looked _delicious_. He heard she was captured, spent two months trying to find out where, and then went like a bat out of hell to take her back. If that wasn't boyfriend material she didn't know what was. He even managed to take one of the bastards out! It wasn't Kakuzu, much to her dismay, but she would take the death of Deidara without shedding a tear. To put it in the words of her older brother, 'bitch is cray, fool ya fool'.

She travelled with them after that, honing the mind and body and developing a few new techniques with the aid of the hell-cat inside her, much like _he_ was helped by the hell-fox inside_ him. _She even became an official part of the tree-hugger military to stay with him! She kept referring to everyone that wasn't him as tree-hugger though, some of their reactions were simply hilarious. She was thanked most profusely that night... after putting up a few privacy barriers. Only he was allowed to see her in all her glory and his sensei was famous as a pervert, voyeur, and writer of smut.

Two years later, it began in earnest. The organization of extremely powerful people versus the rest of the world. It seemed that there was only ten standing against a hundred thousand, but the organization, Akatsuki, had a few tricks up their sleeve; clones and zombies. Suddenly both sides possessed equal numbers and similar general skill levels even if their side had the mental advantage.

The war lasted a grand total of three weeks, and was all the more vicious for it. Ninja aren't really known for being friendly, but the war caused each and every one of them to reach new levels of darkness and depravity.

They managed to survive, if barely. She wasn't exactly sure on the details, those days were and are still a bit hazy in her mind. Her former nickname ended up becoming her, though. She was the new Hell-Cat. The Lady Two-Tails. The Nibi no Nekomata [Two-Tailed Monster Cat]. She Who Guards The Gates. The Gates being the ones that all souls have to pass through to reach the afterlife. And the best part was, she only needed to _exist_ to do her job! Fortunately, existence was not a problem.

Eternal and Immortal were just two of the words that accurately described her after that. Had she been alone, she would have broken down and wept bitter, bitter tears as she watched her boyfriend, _mate_, grow old and die. But she wasn't. Both her older brother and her mate had the same thing happen to them. Her older brother was now Lord Eight-Tails, the Hachibi no Ushi-Oni [Eight-Tailed Ox], He Who Guards The Abyss. Her mate had become the Lord Nine-Tails, the Kyuubi no Kitsune [Nine-Tailed Fox], He Who Maintains The Cycle. Five of the remaining six Tailed Beasts were not custodians or embodiments of concepts but of elements, and agreed to merge with the remaining three to increase their power to ludicrous levels. The sixth decided to stay to give her older brother eternal company. She didn't see what his attraction to the Five-Tailed Dolphin-Horse was, but supposed she had little ground to complain on. She was a cat mated to a fox twice her size.

Eventually, as time passed and things became more and more peaceful, they retreated to far-away lands to live in solitude. Until rather suddenly, too sudden for them to react in time, another powerful madman had appeared and destroyed the moon, believing it to be the devil's work. Without a moon, the planet's ecosystem fell into disarray, and the planet shifted ever so slightly in its orbit.

Within two hundred years, the planet had frozen over completely. Another hundred years after that and temperatures had stabilized around minus thirty degrees. They were the only thing left on the planet now, and they had an ingenious idea; Fuuinjutsu assisted sleep tied into a Fuuinjutsu alarm to wake them just in case.

She was Uzumaki-Nii Yugito, the Nibi no Nekomata – though like her fellow Tailed Beasts perfectly capable of assuming a human form – She Who Guards The Gates, but right now she wanted that damn alarm to _stop ringing!_

…

…

…

Wait, ringing? That could only mean...

"Naruto-koi, wake up you damn lazy bastard!" she shouted with all the volume her voice could handle. Given that she was currently in her thirty-story tall cat form, that was a significant amount of noise.

"Wha-?" he said sleepily, his voice rumbling throughout the mountains courtesy of being a sixty-story tall fox. Naruto was never that good with rising from sleep, and sleeping for... a long time would definitely not be conducive to that. His eyes opened slightly. "Ringing. I knew I shouldn't have made the alarm so damn annoying," he groused, using a tail to swipe at an imagined alarm clock in a long-ingrained reflex.

She waited patiently for the gears to turn inside her mate's head. She watched as his eyes, once blue now a deep blood-red with four concentric rings that never failed to turn her on, widened not a minute later. "Someone's here!" he exclaimed jubilantly.

She nodded and they rose in tandem, the other two Tailed Beasts stirring, still half-asleep. They really must have been asleep for millennia if even Kirabi, her annoying older brother, had trouble getting up. She suspected that the only reason Naruto woke as soon as he did was because it was his own array, which meant that he had to anchor it to his own endless supply of chakra which in turn caused additional feedback because he _would _feel even the minutest drain on his own chakra in addition to that infernal ringing. "Exactly, so let's go and find them," she said.

"You've got their location?" her mate asked as they swiftly made their way out of the glacier they had made their sleeping place. She nodded.

"I do. It's extremely faint, though. It's where the Gorge used to be."

"Right," her mate said. "So, five minutes at full sprint west?"

"Mmhmm," she confirmed even as they picked up the pace. She wasn't sure if the person that triggered the alarm even had five minutes left.

The frozen scenery varied little. There wasn't a lot of difference between a deep-frozen tundra and deep-frozen lush plains, but they managed to make do with what they had. It didn't hurt that they could navigate by natural energy alone.

Four minutes later, traversing the frozen planet at break-neck speeds, they stumbled upon a sight that was impressive even to their aged eyes. This human had survived a crash that caused a small crater upon impact, and she didn't even have the benefit of chakra cushioning. She transformed into her human form, blonde hair with purple eyes and two blue tails swinging behind her, quite nude but completely unaffected by the cold. Such were the perks of being an immortal hell-cat whose form was made from flame. Her mate transformed with her, nine red, white-tipped tails swinging lazily about in the frigid air, though he needed to circulate fire chakra within himself to keep him from being affected by the cold.

"She's in a bad way," she said. "Not only is she a goddess among humans for still clinging to life, she's got barely developed chakra, though what little she has is _very_ refined."

"A civilian soldier, then?" he posited in an impressed tone as they both knelt beside her, working hard to keep her from freezing to death before they could move her to the cave.

She hummed. "Quite likely," she allowed. The next few minutes were filled with fevered work as they became accustomed to her blood flow, which differed slightly from the humans they were familiar with, keeping the blood flowing by pushing it forward with their chakra in addition to maintaining a cocoon of warmed air around her. "Let's rush back, Kokuo is the best healer of us all," she said when she deemed it safe for the woman to move.

"Of course, Yugi-chan," he said as he grabbed her arm before she could punch him for the nickname. "Thankfully I came prepared," he continued with a grin as he gathered his chakra. "Steady yourself... … **Hiraishin!**" [Flying Thunder God]

With a flash of yellow, they disappeared from the frozen crash site of Commander Aurora Shepard.

– – – –

"Yo Mr. Nine-o, what's the dealio?" Kirabi half-yawned, too sleepy still to even bother with a half-assed meter.

"Civvie soldier crashed in what used to be the Gorge," he responded. There wasn't a need to clarify the statement, the only Gorge they ever referred to as such was the Gorge of Clouds and Thunder. "She needs immediate medical attention, Kokuo. She's in really bad shape."

Kokuo transformed into her own human form, an elegant white-haired woman with aquamarine eyes and ample breasts much like his Yugi-chan. "I can see that," she said dryly as she started a diagnostic to find out exactly what was wrong with the woman.

"Your powers of observation continue to serve you well, Kokuo," he responded equally blandly.

"But allow me," she continued, invoking a pout from her nine-tailed companion because of her interruption, "in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to interrupt the coming monologue and say that it is a miracle this woman is still alive."

"What's exactly wrong with her?" Yugito asked. She could feel that this woman was important to the grand scheme of things. Probably a prophecy of some kind, she'd have to check the Halls of Prophecy soon.

Kokuo snorted. "What _isn't _wrong with her? She's got beyond third-degree burns, her armour is practically fused to her skin, her lungs are filled with ash, her organs are nearly liquefied and she's practically three breaths away from death."

He frowned. "So wouldn't it be better to just build her a new body and transfer the soul?"

"Not if we want to keep her personality and memories intact," Yugito informed them. "Which, mind you, it needs to be. She's Important to people Up There. The slight variation in psyche because of a new body is _not_ permissible."

The other three nodded, eyes slightly wider than normal. It wasn't the first time they met people that were Important Up There, but even after untold thousands of years they could count the number of two hands and have fingers left over. "How long will it take to heal her?"

"A month?" Kokuo hedged cautiously. "I can't just heal everything either, quite a few organs need replacing entirely, and while we're at it we might as well beef up her chakra network."

"Let's get to it, then."

– – – –

She cracked her eyes open without much effort, much to her surprise. Her surprise increased when her eyes focused and she found herself wearing nothing but a very smooth silk kimono in the middle of an ice bed inside an enormous ice cave. She guessed the cave to be a massive nine kilometres in length and one-hundred fifty metres in height.

She sat up as silently as her body allowed her, marvelling at the lack of the excruciating pain she felt not five minutes earlier as she plummeted down towards the frozen dirt, looking around with very large eyes. The cave itself was rather unremarkable except for its size, but what surprised her was the amount of detail she could see. She could make out individual ice-stalagmites at what she guessed to be four kilometres!

A soft murmur drifted down from the opening of the cave nearly a kilometre from her bed, and she silently marvelled at the strength of her hearing. She winced as she swiftly realized that her new ears could become a big hindrance in a very, very short timescale. She had to order some specialized earplugs to tone down most sound.

She sat down cross-legged, folding the kimono so that the areas she considered private were kept from the sight of whoever was moving into the cave where she was. For some reason, the cold ice hardly bothered her, as if her nerve endings were dulled to the cold.

Four beings entered her vision. The first was a tall, well-built male with tanned skin, black stylish sunglasses, lime or white hair and beard, and she could see no less than four swords in their sheaths across his back. He wore green pants with metal shin guards, white arm guards, and what seemed to be a white, one-strap flak jacket, though she didn't recognize the model. And were those _tentacles_ sticking out his back? She nodded to herself after a moment's consideration. Yes, those were eight tentacles sprouting from his tailbone.

The second was a pale white-haired woman moving with unearthly grace, a chest that made her feel inadequate about her own high-C cup, and flawless skin the colour of pale porcelain. She wore a simple but elegant red kimono complementing her skin colour. Her most striking features were the brilliant aquamarine eyes and the five, equally aquamarine, equine tails sprouting from her back.

The third was a woman as well, though this one was in possession of blond hair that fell to her mid-back. She stood slightly taller than the other woman, she guessed that their heights were 172 and 174 cm or something similar, and her chest made her feel equally inadequate about her own. She wore an intricate ocean-blue kimono sporting patterns she could vaguely recognize as Shintō shrines. She had a feeling that her limited knowledge of Japanese was going to be useful in the near future. This second woman sported purple eyes with two concentric blue bands, one in the middle of the iris and one at the edge with the blue sclera. Two deep blue feline tails followed the woman as she walked.

The fourth was a man, slightly shorter than the other though she could see he was equally well-built, though more athletic than body-builder. He sported blond hair, the tips a burnt orange-red, and a standard Caucasian skin tone. Three whisker marks adorned each cheek, giving a vulpine impression that was heightened by the two very vulpine ears sticking out from the mass of hair on top of his head. Nine fox tails, red with white tips, drifted lazily in the air behind him. She mentally prepared herself; her old Japanese room mate was _obsessed _with the mythology surrounding the Kyuubi no Kitsune almost as much as she was obsessed with honing her kleptomania into a career and had shared some of the juicier stories with her. _Note to self: get back into contact with Kasumi if at all possible._

She could hear mechanical whirring sounding from behind the four tailed humanoids, though it was rather far off. The blonde woman pointed in her direction and spoke something she couldn't make out. She could hear each word, but her Japanese was not what it once was and normal speaking speeds were beyond her ability to comprehend. The white haired woman vanished from sight, only to reappear next to her a second later. She leaned back, startled. This woman had just crossed what she guessed to be a kilometre in less than a second!

"Relax, Aurora Shepard," the woman said in a soothing tone in perfect Galactic Standard, not a trace of accent hinting at a planet of origin that the Council wasn't aware of. She tensed; how did the woman know her name? "I am Kokuo. I have spent the last three months healing you."

_Three months? What about Joker? Tali? Garrus? Liara? Wrex? _"Three months?" she asked in a dazed tone. She only got a nod as a reply. _What happened to my crew, my team, my _friends?

"Yes," Kokuo confirmed. "It only took a month or so to heal you, but you stayed in a coma for another two. Not altogether surprising, given the state you were in."

She turned a weary eye on Kokuo even as the other three made their way towards her, the mechanical clanking remaining in the background out of sight. "Where am I and how do you speak Galactic Standard?" she asked.

"You are approximately fifty kilometres from where you crashed on the planet you call Alchera," Kokuo replied serenely. "As for the language... we'll tell you later. The new friend who taught the four of us told us you weren't exactly a fan of his kind."

Shepard eyed Kokuo warily. 'Not a fan of his kind' meant Batarians or Geth, assuming she was talking species. Otherwise it meant slavers, raiders, or pirates and she doubted that either of the three would keep a shapely woman like Kokuo intact.

Still, fifty kilometres from where she landed? That meant that she was still on Alchera, wearing nothing but a silk kimono on a planet that was -20 degrees Celsius at it's position closest to the Amada system star. Her call of bullshit must have shone on her face.

"I guarantee you, we are still on the planet you call Alchera, Aurora Shepard," she said as serenely as ever. "In the process of healing you, we made several... modifications to your body."

"What kind of modifications?" she asked bluntly with not a little bit of apprehension that her modifications changed who she was.

"We had to craft a new set of organs for you practically from scratch, so we improved them. Your metabolism has been increased while your general resistance to poisons has shot through the roof. For example, you could drink a bottle of ethylene glycol and suffer naught but a mild stomach ache." She turned to face the blond man that had approached them during her talk. "Like this baka did when he was young." She turned back. "In addition, you've been granted the use of chakra, the blend of physical and mental energies to perform feats of unimaginable proportions... with training."

"Yup," the blond man agreed in the same perfect accent of Galactic Standard. "Things you can do with chakra include, but are not limited to, spitting fire and water, throwing lightning, harnessing the wind and shearing the earth. I gave you the Terumi clan Lava chakra as well, which will allow you to produce corrosive lava from your mouth, though to do so I had to practically remove your ability to produce wind and water," he finished with a brilliant smile.

She gaped. What kind of nutcases were they? Producing elements from her body as if she was a god? The man nodded sagely as the other blond joined him. "I see you don't believe me," he said with another sage nod. "That was totally my reaction when I first learned about chakra. Allow me to demonstrate."

He took a few steps back and to the side. "You'll want to turn around for this one," he said mischievously. The female blonde turned to him with exasperation written on her face. "What in the name of the Sage are you going to do?" she asked. He simply brought his hands together and made two strange configurations with his fingers that looked downright uncomfortable. "**Yōton**," he intoned calmly. "**Yomi Kazan**."[Lava Release: Underworld Volcano]

Shepard's jaw felt like it dislocated as she watched as his three words produced a miniature _volcano in the middle of the glacier! _And she was going to be able to do that, if she understood correctly.

"How?" she asked in a daze. He simply chuckled.

"Chakra," was his cheeky reply that earned him a smack on the arm from the other blond. "That was the product of a years' worth of high-intensity training similar to what we'll be putting you through." He slapped his own cheek as if admonishing himself. "Where are my manners?" he muttered softly. "Allow me to introduce myself, Aurora Shepard. I am Uzumaki Naruto, and this is my wife Yugito. You've already met Kokuo, and the other guy is Kokuo's husband, Kirabi."

"Yo," the hulking man called Kirabi said with a wave. She waved back.

"A pleasure, I'm sure," she replied. She decided that she would ask a question that was burning in her mind since she had first heard it. "What's the source of the mechanical whirring I hear from where you came from?" she asked, her mind dreading the possible answer. The answer that suddenly became a lot more likely as she watched Kokuo, who had so far seemed remarkably collected, flinch ever so slightly.

"That's our friend we mentioned earlier," she said in the serene tone she figured Kokuo always spoke in. "We call him Taigun," [Legion] Kokuo replied. Wooden vines sprung from the ice below her and snared her in place. The colour drained from Shepard's face as this could only mean one thing. "He is what you call Geth."

Shepard's hand tried to fly to where her weapons usually hung on her frame but the vines wouldn't budge. Kokuo smiled, though she could see a hint of sadness in it. _Whatever is she sad for? _"Taigun told us you'd react like that. We should inform you that he landed about two months ago. If he wanted you dead you would be dead already. Chakra does not make one immune to bullets. Come on out and say hello, Taigun," she added the last with a shout towards the cavern's entrance as Shepard was still struggling with the vines.

A Geth unit unlike anything Shepard had seen before jogged into view. He was sleeker, yet bulkier than any similar unit she'd seen so far. He moved with a grace that she didn't usually associate with Geth troopers. She paused in her struggling as her mind whirled to analyse the Geth moving towards her. It was faster, more elegant than other troopers. It had a shine to it that other Geth Troopers didn't possess. Shiny coatings were a combat hazard, so it was unlikely that this was a combat model. It stopped in front of her, well within her reach if only these _damn vines would let go!_

"Shepard-Commander, this unit greets you," it said. She froze trying to process the phenomenon. Geth didn't speak! Absently, she corrected it while she was still processing the phenomenon of a talking Geth.

"Spectre, not Commander. I had to resign my Alliance commission when my probationary period was up."

"Shepard-Spectre, this unit greets you," it said again, the statement slightly modified to include the new information. She slowly stopped struggling, reminding herself that when Geth platforms were destroyed the programs that inhabited them simply uploaded into the main Geth network unless you could jam the wireless transmission, and she didn't have a jammer on her. That was part of the reason why they were such bastards to fight. Kill one no matter how stealthily and the rest knows where you are. Kill a few in open combat and the rest will be more familiar with how you fight. She decided to get some information.

"Why are you here?"

"The Geth desire an intermediary. We have observed unusual interactions between organics and determined the best representative to convey our findings to the Citadel Council. To this end, we sought you out, Shepard-Spectre.

"We determined your last known location from reports filed to the System Alliance Administration and Citadel Council and developed a platform with enough processing equipment to function autonomously. We managed to follow your path to the Amada system, where your signal terminated abruptly. Flying debris that was determined to be from the vessel SSV Normandy indicated a hostile encounter with another vessel with the likely conclusion of the Normandy's destruction. Consensus was achieved and our exploratory vessel touched down on the planet designated Alchera at the location we determined to have a 60% probability of being your crash site. Our estimations were off by twenty-five kilometres. Three minutes after we landed, we were met with the organically impossible presence of Uzumaki-Kyuubi and were brought here."

She raised an eyebrow. "And how did you manage to track my path?"

Taigun moved his eyeflaps in a gesture curiously close to how humans express discomfort. _Discomfort at what? _"Security encryption used by organic government falls within minutes of a hacking attempt initiated by the Collective. We have duplicates of all your reports, files from most megacorporations, and the Citadel Council."

Shepard stared with wide, horrified eyes. The Geth could do that? "What happens now?" she managed to get out with great difficulty. She needed to let Anderson know post-haste.

"Right now?" Naruto responded. "Very little. You're going to rest up, and then we're going to spend the next two years training you in your chakra."

"Why two years?" she asked. It seemed such an arbitrary amount of time.

"Other than the fact that untrained chakra in the quantities you have it available to you is dangerous to you?" he asked in return. "There won't actually be much of note going on in the next two years.

"We're going to have to relocate, however. Your continued existence is to be kept a tight secret, and this planet will be swarming with people looking for your body soon enough. Taigun has graciously offered transportation for the five of us." He retracted the vines and gave her a soft shove on her shoulder.

"So take this moment to catch some more sleep. You'll need your energy soon enough."

– – – – –

**Author's note: Let me know what you think, okay? I'll probably continue with this, but reviews are always nice.**


	2. Chapter 2

****Someone request clarity, so I'm going to give it to them the best way I know how; bluntly. ****

**The Sharingan [Copy Wheel Eye] in **_all_** its forms, is **_dead. _

**The Mokuton [Wood Release] is **_dead_**. The wooden vines from last chapter will be explained in this. **

**Lastly, any and all shinobi not explicitly or implicitly mentioned alive in this chapter are dead.**

– – – –

The first thing her mind noted as it entered her post-sleep start-up cycle was that she felt heavy, like she had gained twenty kilos overnight. The second thing was that she was lying on something _very _comfortable.

Then everything else hit her. The ash in the air she breathed, the dry heat of the atmosphere around her, the loud noises in the background, as if bombs were going off non-stop. She carefully cracked her eyes open, trying her best not to move a muscle in case her surroundings were hostile. Grey walls met her vision and she wondered where she was. She looked around as best she could without being obvious about it; the other walls were grey as well. The room she was in was small and cramped, counting one standard-size bed at each wall that didn't have the perfectly rectangular and currently open door to the outside. She heard the soft sounds of an idle ship's engine close by that was slowly powering down. Obviously she was on a space-worthy ship of some kind that had landed and was staying here for a while. Eezo drives powerful enough for FTL sometimes took _days_ to fully power down. She could hear far-off explosions going off continuously, as if someone had married an old-school M61 Vulcan gun with an MIRV and was firing it with abandon.

Then her recent memories hit her with full force; the death of the SSV Normandy, the crash on Alchera, meeting those four strange individuals, being told that three months had passed, being informed of 'chakra' was and a demonstration by _casually creating a volcano in a glacier!, _then the Geth, _Geth!_, that was actually _speaking_ to her. A _Geth_ that was _speaking! _A groan split past her dehydrated lips, far too many shocks had happened in far too rapid a succession yesterday.

At least, she hoped it was yesterday. She sat up gingerly, her muscles felt stiff and she didn't want to aggravate them unnecessarily. She was glad that the sensitivity of her ears seemed to have gone down, though. On second, belated, thought; why did the Geth speaking hold her attention more than casually creating a volcano on a frozen planet?

"Yo, Mr. Nine-o!" a voice boomed from around the corner and she groaned again. Couldn't he use a headset like a normal person? Her auditory sensitivity may have gone down, her ears were still far sharper than normal and there was next to zero sound dampening in these walls. She remembered him as the tallest man she ever laid eyes on, standing at over two metres. Wasn't he called Kirabi or something like that? "Shep's awake bro!"

She could hear footsteps moving towards her at a rapid clip even as the person near her door walked away at a more subdued pace. She stood up carefully, flexing her muscles in an attempt to loosen them up a bit with the current lack of space necessary for meaningful stretches. She held a hand against the wall to steady herself as she walked forward. Just how long had she been asleep? "Kokuo and me will be out, scouting the lands throughout," she could hear Kirabi say. Was he always going to talk that way? She hoped not. "Alright, don't forget your Henge," she heard another male voice respond. _What the hell's a Henge? _Her brows furrowed as she tried to engage her brain trying to remember what the word meant... but it wouldn't respond nearly as quickly as she was used to. _What the hell's going on? _

She made it outside the small craft, which was exactly as small as the tiny sleeping room made it appear to be, barely twenty metres in length and painted a metallic grey, much like the interior.

Her eyes drifted to gaze upon the decidedly alien landscape. She could see an erupting volcano in the distance, surrounded by desert on one side and a craggy mountain range on the other. There was even more ash in the air here and the atmosphere was stifling. Massive strikes of thunder could be seen in the distance, the air distorting the normal rumbles of a thunderstorm into a sound that was more fit for an explosion that a lightning strike. She guessed it to be a solid forty degrees Celsius. She could only hope that this was this planet's equivalent of summer. A shiver ran down her spine as she realized this place looked a bit like she always imagined Tolkien's Mordor would look like.

Strangely enough, she wasn't sweating even a tiny bit. Was this more of that strange 'chakra' stuff that was mentioned?

"A good morning, Aurora Shepard. Or maybe afternoon. This planet's cycle is weird," Naruto said with a shrug once he had closed the distance.

"How long have I been out, Naruto, was it?" she asked, trying to recapture her Commander 'Don't mess with me' Shepard vibe back by leaning on one leg and crossing her arms in front of her stomach.

"Indeed it is I, Uzumaki Naruto," he confirmed with a nod and a smile. "You've been out like a light for two standard days, according to our metallic friend Taigun."

Two standard days? That wasn't so bad at all, approximately equal to two and a half Earth days of sleep. But why did she feel so lethargic. so slow to process incoming sensory input, if it had only been 60 or so hours? Voicing her thoughts, Naruto's face transformed from a bright smile into a slight frown. "That's because your chakra is still locked at the moment, Aurora Shepard," he said. "The lethargy will go away with exercise and actually training to use your chakra."

Right. _What the hell is he talking about? 'Locked' chakra? _"What the hell _is_ chakra?" she demanded. "You mentioned only that it was a blend of physical and mental energies, but there's not such a thing as physical and mental energies!" she yelled at him. He had the audacity to chuckle. _Chuckle_!

"I'm not the person you ask something about chakra theory," Naruto said bluntly. "While I'm far from unintelligent these days, I am still more adept at tactile learning than learning by books. My understanding of chakra is instinctual. Any one of the other three would be able to give you a better answer, though you'd have to decipher Kirabi's rap of... indeterminate quality. I would recommend Yugito, but I'm biased," he added with a wry grin. She snorted, remembering he had introduced Yugito as his wife, and decided that now was the time to ask a question that she had been dying to ask since she walked out of the ship before the blonde starting talking again.

"Where are we?" she asked. "I don't recognize the landscape at all."

Naruto's frown turned back into a radiant smile. She suspected he was enjoying her confusion at the moment, the bastard. "This planet is on the Council Interdiction List, following the slaughter of Council First Contact teams a few decades ago, according to Taigun-kun," Naruto informed her happily. This planet was on the Interdiction List? At least that narrowed it down to seven planets, _all _of them extremely unfriendly at best. She hoped it was simply an extremely unfriendly planet rather than one of the outright hostile ones. She would have responded had Naruto not continued. "I have multiple instances of myself running around at the moment trying to find out how this planet's civilization, and it has one, works."

"You have multiples of yourself running around," she said in a deadpan after taking a moment to process his words, levelling a glare onto Naruto who nodded brightly. "Is this more of what that 'chakra' can do? And you still haven't said the name of the planet." Seriously, what _couldn't _this chakra do?

Naruto nodded again. "It is. It's called the **Kage Bunshin no Jutsu**. [Shadow Clone Technique] I create perfect copies of myself that return their experiences back to me upon dispelling voluntarily or through force. Perfect for recon, and you'll be learning how to do it yourself. As for the planet's name?" he said while turning around so that she faced his back. He planted his right foot on a conveniently placed ankle-high rock, stretching his right arm dramatically into the air as he did so.

"Welcome to Parnack."

– – – – _Two Standard Days Ago, Space Over Alchera – – – – _

Her eyes narrowed in annoyance as yet another team failed to give her any sort of solid information on their target. They'd been here in the space over Alchera for three months already and they just couldn't find her! They were running out of time, Council or Alliance recovery teams could be here any day now. A screen started to glow the customary orange and she almost absently pressed the haptic button to open the incoming communication from one of her teams ground-side.

"Yes?" she asked curtly.

"We've got a massive heat reading, ma'am," her subordinate in charge of that particular team said. She trained her eyes on the holographic rectangle with the lines representing the speaker's audio waves, her flaring temper suppressed in light of potentially positive news.

"Do tell," she said impatiently, absently putting an errant lock of hair in its place.

"Heat readings are consistent with a class-3 eruption under a few kilometres of ice, ma'am. I've taken the liberty to send a recon team to find out what's what."

She raised an eyebrow. A competent, or at least not unintelligent subordinate? "Keep me posted," was all she said, tacitly approving of his decision. If it backfired it was on the subordinate's head, if it succeeded she could always claim credit if she so desired.

"Will do, ma'am." The line went dead.

A class-3 eruption underneath a glacier on a world that has been frozen over since before the Asari stumbled upon it nearly three thousand years ago, that had seen not even a single class-1 eruption in at least ninety million years if Asari atmospheric dating was correct? Something was very off here.

She mentally flagged the subordinate for promotion assessment. Even semi-competent underlings were so hard to come by these days.

– – – – _Current Day – – – – _

Shepard froze, staring at the blond in his dramatic pose with horrified eyes. Parnack? The homeworld of the Yahg, a species with adults that weighed three times as much as the average human while standing between 180 and 250 cm depending on gender and age? The species of which the sole surviving video accounts showed a brutality close to that of the historic account of Rachni, or the Krogan Rebellions?

"P-Parnack?" she asked hesitantly. A stray thought entered her head. "How did you not trigger Council Interdiction Squad intervention?"

"Indeed," he confirmed calmly. "As for your second question... we have a synthetic friend perfectly capable of masking our tracks. I don't know more than that. As for your implied question of 'why here?'..." He paused for a moment. "This planet is absolutely perfect for your training."

"How could a planet known for having the second-most brutal, tied second with the Krogan, species in known galactic history be absolutely perfect for _training_?" she asked incredulously, making a valiant attempt to smother her fear. She was an N7 graduate and a Spectre, she didn't do the whole 'showing emotions' thing!

"The answer to that lies in the higher than Earth gravity, or even higher than Alchera gravity, and your chakra, which Yugito and Kokuo will explain further," the blonde said, crossing his hand at the small of his back. "Kirabi and I will oversee your physical regimen and most of your actual chakra training. Kirabi will mostly take care of your physical regimen, he doesn't have a lot to teach you regarding the use of chakra for his focuses most on water and lightning with a dash of wind."

"Can you speak in less confusing riddles, please?" she asked, practically half-begged. She would deny it if asked, though. Spectre Shepard _did not_ beg.

"Once your education under Yugito has progressed for even a week, what I just said will not be a riddle." He turned and walked away, motioning for her to follow. Once her mind had processed the action, which took longer than she was comfortable with, she moved to keep pace with the blonde. "Your training will be of high intensity, both the theoretical parts and the physical parts."

_Well, shit. I never was all that good at the theory of something that wasn't related to engineering or history. _It was why she underwent Sentinel training, rather than train to be an Adept or Vanguard. Her grasp on biotics was good, but it _paled_ when compared to her engineering skills and she couldn't become a Combat Engineer because she had biotics. Hell, even Tali had said she was impressed by her back on the Normandy! "Where are we going and what are we going to do?" she asked curiously.

"There is a cave up ahead," he said as they continued to walk at a leisurely pace so she could keep up. "That will be our staging area. Every day you will perform morning and evening workouts, callisthenics mostly at first with the rest of the day filled by chakra training. Every second day will be fully devoted to theory except for the morning and evening workouts. Every third day will be spent with our synthetic friend Taigun to keep your engineering skills up, taking precedence whenever there's a clash with the chakra theory days. As much as you dislike Taigun-kun," he started to add after noticing she was tensing up at the mere mention of Taigun, "he is a fully synthetic sapient being and as such an invaluable instructor for this discipline. Though given the history that Taigun-kun shared with us, I can't say I entirely blame you for your reaction.

"Trust will come in time," he added in a tone she surmised was supposed to be sagely. She scoffed internally; like hell she was going to trust a Geth without having her favourite Quarian give her seal of approval. "Your physical regimen will be fairly simple at first; simple callisthenics and running. For all that we rebuilt you better than you were, your muscles are still mostly unused. We'll wait with the flexibility training until later," he finished, stressing the words 'flexibility training' in a subtle way that made her feel distinctly ill at ease.

"Flexibility training? Like, gymnastics?"

He grinned a grin that she could practically see despite still walking behind him. "Oh no. More in the sense of, 'dodge like hell or you might seriously die'."

She groaned. That did not sound fun, or sane. Why go to such lengths to rebuild her only to kill her again if she wasn't paying attention? She turned a weary eye on him, somehow she got the impression that wasn't all. Probably to do with the impossibly wide grin on the expectant face aimed her way. "My gut says you're holding something back. Spit it out."

"Very well, Aurora Shepard," he said as he turned his head so that she could see his maniacal grin. "If you want to know so badly, I'll be stirring up a little riot among the local tribes in the next two years. Your graduation exam will be to put it down. Permanently."

_A riot of nothing but Yahg? Spirits above and below, he's insane! _Shepard froze again, staring at the blonde with horrified eyes for the second time in less than an hour.

"Naruto-koi," a woman's admonishing voice came from ahead as a feeling of calm washed over her. "You're scaring her."

"Yugi-chan," Naruto whined like a child instead of the grown man he was. "You're taking away all my fun."

She sighed and put her hands together in what Shepard would later learn was the Ox hand seal. "**Suna no Kaiha**," [Sand Arm] she intoned calmly as an arm of sand erupted from the ground and picked Naruto up by the scruff of his neck. Shepard couldn't help but chuckle at the blonde's predicament even as she internally goggled at the casual display of environmental control. Much like an owner scolding their pet, Yugito turned a stern eye on her husband. "Naruto, behave."

Yugito turned her head to look at Shepard, steadfastly ignoring Naruto's pout. "You're looking well, Aurora Shepard," she said.

"Call me Shepard, please," she said. She wasn't overly fond of her first name after elementary school.

"Very well then, Shepard. Come with me," she responded, motioning with a tail for her to follow as she walked away with her husband in tow, still in the clutches of the hand of sand. Not fifty metres further down the mountain path they stopped in front of a cave. "This is, as my husband has said, the staging area. This is where you will sleep, eat, and learn. Training will be done outside. Any questions?"

Shepard simply shook her head. Even if she had questions, she didn't think she'd get answers she'd be able to comprehend just yet.

"Good. Then let's begin. First step: unlocking your chakra."

– – – – _One day ago – – – –_

She was reading a progress report from the team on the other side of the planet when the orange glow of the haptic communications interface attracted her attention. She narrowed her eyes at it. The recon team sent to explore the Class-3 eruption took a full day to find it and report back?

_This had better be _damned_ good._ She accepted the call. "Talk," she said curtly, letting the full force of her displeasure at their tardiness be known in that single word. She heard her subordinate gulp nervously and a small smile flitted across her face before she suppressed it ruthlessly. Sounds of struggle were audible in the background.

"We've found something but you're not going to be believe me if I tell you, ma'am. I think it better that you come down here and see for yourself."

She scowled. What was this subordinate playing at? "I think whatever you've found cannot be as bad as you're making it out to be, Field Researcher," she said in a tone reflecting the Alchera surface.

"I respectfully disagree, ma'am," was the researcher's only response in a tense voice. She could hear shouting in the background and turned up the volume.

"-ucking sacrifice you heathens to the glory of Jashin-sama!" a man's voice yelled. Her brows furrowed. _What in the name of God? _She turned the volume down, silently thanking her boss for insisting she learn multiple Terran languages the old-fashioned way, including Japanese. _What would a Japanese-speaking person be doing on Alchera, of all places? _She wondered absently. Last she checked, the only thing on Alchera was ice, ice, and more ice.

"This had better be _damn _good, Field Researcher." She closed the connection. _What have those idiots stumbled upon _this_ time? _

She shook her head as she made her way to the shuttle. Even her inner monologue was becoming exasperated lately.

– – – – _Current Day_ – – – –

Shepard put her hands in the shown configuration, wondering when her hands had last been so dexterous. Sure, she could type rather fast as was required of an Alliance Sentinel with a heavier focus on the tech side than the biotic side, but she hadn't had true dexterity in her fingers since she was eighteen and had to mostly stop playing guitar due to time constraints with military training. Her mind felt clearer just by putting her hands in this position, but that may have been wishful thinking.

Yugito poked and prodded her hands to correct even the minutest of mistakes. She got the feeling that Yugito was going to demand perfection in everything. "So, why is unlocking chakra so vital for me?" she asked curiously.

"Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't," Yugito admitted. "However, my dearest husband decided to give you chakra reserves to a Kage, which is rather a lot of chakra for humans."

"How is that bad?" she asked confused.

"Because chakra flows through the body in a chakra network called the Keirakukei," Yugito explained. "Think of it as an extra set of blood vessels, except it transports chakra instead of blood. Similar to blood, the body produces chakra continuously. _Unlike_ blood, chakra does not break down. There are no chakra 'cells' to break down and die to be replaced by newly produced chakra, _and _there isn't a limiter in your body that says 'stop producing chakra' when the Keirakukei is full. Normally, even with a 'sealed' system, there is some chakra bleed so that the chakra system does not overflow, a phenomenon which _will_ kill. This bleed is not particularly large, however, so only untrained, civilian-level chakra can be left unlocked until a natural death from old age."

"How much more chakra is this 'Kage-level' compared to an untrained civilians'?" she asked somewhat nervously.

"Approximately ten _thousand_ times as much. It is so much that your body is slowly shutting down its main activities, inducing a lethargic state. Frankly, I don't know how you survived as long as you have with as much chakra as my husband has given you."

Naruto coughed in a clearly fake manner. Their heads turned towards the still-hanging blonde, who was holding up a metre-long plain black rod. Yugito sighed. "That answers that. He stuck that in you and siphoned off chakra," she clarified upon seeing Shepard's confused expression.

"You can do that?" she asked incredulously, her hands starting to tremble from the strain of the weird configuration.

Naruto nodded. "You'll find that there is very little I _can't _do with chakra, Shepard," he said, putting action to word by almost casually breaking the sand arm by sticking the black rod into it, landing with a soft thud on two feet.

"Back on track," Yugito said curtly. "Now that you've prepared the Ram seal, as that particular position is called, all you have to do is find your chakra and bring it out.

"The chakra network has 361 tenketsu, or chakra points, through which we can expel chakra. By doing this you are forcing your tenketsu open, which will increase the bleed of chakra to safe levels."

Shepard nodded. That seemed simple and reasonable enough. Except... "How do I do that, exactly?"

Yugito face-palmed with a soft mutter Shepard couldn't understand while Naruto chuckled. "Turn your focus inward," the male blonde said. "Ignore sensory input and reach out with your mind to inside your body. You should find a source of warmth. Focus on it, grasp it, and bring it out."

That sounded similar to what her biotics instructor said back in the Academy. She nodded and sank into the same meditative state she used when she was learning to harness her biotics, keeping her hands in the same position despite the ache from tendons stretching further and longer than they had in years.

It didn't take her all that long to find the described source of warmth. She suspected that her earlier biotics training was responsible for both her easy acceptance of chakra – she rationalized it as extremely advanced biotics – and the ease with which she found her own core of chakra. A source of warmth spread from her stomach through her body, and she guessed that this was her chakra core.

A minute and fourteen attempts at grasping the chakra later she sighed mentally. It was like trying to grasp a body of water with her bare hands! _What if I bring it out as if it _is_another form of biotics? _

The idea had merit, she decided after a few seconds. Both were forms of energy, capable of being manipulated, and produced by her body. What could go wrong? She went through her mnemonic to fire a Warp but refrained from throwing it and opened her eyes to see if it worked. A red-orange glow met her gaze. _My hands are on fire!, _she thought, instinctively shutting off the chakra flow much like she would cancel a mid-preparation Warp. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the fire go out, leaving her hands as pristine as they were before.

"Fire," she heard Naruto mumble. "Aggression, offence and counter-defence rather than defence and counter-attack, recklessness, and a temper. We can work with that."

"Indeed," Yugito agreed readily. Shepard wanted to rail at them for describing her as reckless and having a temper, but flinched internally as she realized that she was going to do exactly what they were saying she was going to do. "What do you think? **Karyūken**?" [Fire Dragon Fist]

"It's a possibility," Naruto continued, keeping his voice at the same volume as before. "Or a blend? **Uzukaryūken**?" [Whirling Fire Dragon Fist]

She stretched her fingers to relieve the ache, silently marvelling at the fact that she hadn't felt so... _alive_ in years! Her body was flooded with energy and she found it hard to sit still, much like a six year old on a sugar rush. Her thoughts were whirling through her mind at much the same speed and frequency, but comprehension of outside stimuli was faster. Much faster. "Earlier," she started, grabbing both her teacher's attention. "You said 'for humans'. Are you not human yourself?"

"We once were, a long time ago," Yugito said. "Exactly how long I don't know. Now, though, we are Bijū. Tailed Beasts. We ditched our fully human bodies to become masses of sapient chakra." She poked herself. "As you can see, though, we possess the ability to transform into human and humanoid forms.

"Now that you've unlocked your chakra," Yugito continued without giving Shepard a chance to ask more questions, "we're going to start your training. Two years may seem like a long time, but it's not."

– – – – _Two Earth DaysInto the Future– – – –_

She swallowed nervously as she made her way to the Quantum Entanglement Communicator, a recently developed technology by the Alliance, stolen by Cerberus, that was practically eavesdrop-proof. Despite the recovery of an apparently immortal man, her boss was unlikely to be pleased.

The immortal man was not Shepard, after all. She could only hope that the knowledge of this new energy, 'chakra' the man called it, was enough to stave off her boss' ire. Her subconscious scoffed. Of course it wouldn't be. The recovery of Shepard was vital because Shepard was a symbol of humanity's perseverance through harsh times, because Shepard could rally even the most disparate of individuals behind her, because Shepard was a beacon of everything that was _right_ with humanity. Uncompromising of her human nature even while observing alien rituals and customs enough that they would follow her of their own free will.

And she, Miranda Lawson, had failed to procure such an individual for reconstruction in the Lazarus Project. If she lived out the month it would be a miracle.

Filled with apprehension, though she allowed none of it to show on her face or body language, she entered the QEC. The holographic overlay of her boss' office superimposed itself on her end of the two QEC's even as a hologram of herself appeared on the QEC in her boss' office.

"_Miranda,_" her boss greeted her, colder than she'd ever heard him before. She gulped audibly.

Her boss was _not_ pleased.

– – – – _Current Day – – – – _

Shepard came to a halt behind her two blond teachers in the middle of a flat plain. The closest comparison Shepard had in mind were the salt flats she once saw a picture of, except with sand.

Her lungs and muscles screamed from the exertion, the pace between the cave and the flats having been brutal even by N7 standards. Her two teachers weren't even breathing hard. "What now?" she got out between pants.

"Normally," Yugito started to explain. "We'd have you get some chakra theory under your belt before starting a physical regimen and _then_ do this, but your prolonged state of dormancy necessitates that this goes first. Can you guess why?"

Shepard frowned in thought. They'd not mentioned what they were going to do here. "I assume we'll be doing something with this 'chakra'?"

Yugito nodded. "Then, I can only guess that in a vein similar to proper blood flow, proper chakra flow is important too?"

Yugito nodded again with a slight grin on her face. "Very good, Shepard. Yes, we will be working on actually using your chakra the next few days so that any irregularities in your chara flow from prolonged stagnancy are smoothed out. Naru-koi, if you will a tree?" she asked of her partner who only nodded before clapping his hands together with a look of concentration on his face.

He separated his hands and slammed both to the ground in front of him. A curious green glow appeared directly in between his hands and this glow then grew upward. Her eyes widened as she recognized the shape the green glow was assuming. She didn't recognize the type but she could tell that a large tree, easily seven metres tall, was being formed in front of her eyes.

"**Senpō: Onmyōton: Banbutsu Sōzō**!" [Sage Art: Yin-Yang Release: Creation of All Things] Naruto yelled out and a tree she could now identify as a gigantic oak tree, seven metres tall, two metres in diameter, fully came into being in front of her. It was a rather standard oak tree with a rich green crown and the first three metres completely bare of any form of branches. She took half a step back and pointed a shaky finger at the tree with wide eyes.

"H-How did you do that?" she asked with wonder and awe in her voice. A grin appeared on Naruto's face.

"That is part of why there is very little I _can't _do with chakra. The secret is in my eyes, known as the **Rinnegan**. [Samsāra Eye] Among other things, they literally allow me to create things from pure chakra."

"Woah," she replied eloquently, suitably impressed. "Out of curiosity, what can't you do with chakra?"

"Illusions," Naruto answered curtly. She nodded, easily rationalizing the fact that an energy that could be used to create something tangible could create something _in_tangible. "The only illusion I can sort of do is the **Jubaku Satsu **[Tree Binding Death], which I used to restrain you back on Alchera." Shepard allowed an eyebrow to meet her hairline. Those vines had certainly _felt_ real. Then again, it wasn't much of an illusion if it didn't feel convincingly real. "Five hundred thousand years of practice and I still suck at them," Naruto groused softly, but loud enough for her to hear. _Did I hear that right? Five hundred thousand years?_

"Pressing on," Yugito interrupted, "Your first exercise is this: climb to the top of that tree without using your hands."

She turned a confused eye to Yugito. "What, like chakra suction cups on the bottom of my feet? Is that even possible?"

Yugito looked at her, impressed with her quick deduction. Certainly her students way back when didn't get the idea that fast. _Then again_, Yugito thought, _she _is_ an adult, not a green behind the ears twelve-year-old. _Yugito nodded. "Yes it is, and it's exactly what you'll need to do. Too much chakra and you'll be blown away, too little and you'll fall to the ground. I recommend a running start."

"Here," Naruto said, drawing both women's attention. "This is how it's done." He casually walked to the tree he had created and placed a foot on the bark. "Like you said, chakra suction cup." He placed his second foot on the bark, higher than his first, and continued walking leisurely up the bark until he hung upside down from a branch, much like a bat would. "Your muscles still need toning, Shepard," he said as he walked back down. "Walking up the way I did is something for next month, when your leg muscles have shaken off three months and a few days of rust."

She nodded to show her understanding of the rather sensible words. She decided to practice channelling chakra to her feet while standing still so that she wouldn't run up the tree without creating the chakra suction cups. That would simply be embarrassing.

After a few minutes, she nodded to her herself and took a deep breath. She ran full-tilt at the tree, channelling chakra to her foot as she put the appendage on the bark. Her second followed swiftly in the wake of the first, and then her first foot took her third step on the tree when she lost control of the chakra and was launched from the tree with a minor explosive sound, landing on her butt three metres away. Repeating the process saw much the same result.

She sighed. This could take a while.

– – – –

**DUN DUN DUN HIDAN LIVES! What will Cerberus learn about chakra from him?**

**Naruto mentions five hundred thousand years of practice. Keep in mind, this is well **_after_** he became the Kyūbi and obtained the Rinnegan. Also keep in mind that this is _well before_ he and the rest of his Tailed Beast compatriots went to sleep. It's been quite a bit longer than 500k years since the shinobi walked the surface of Alchera.**

**Kaiha is the archaic pronunciation for **腕, **which means arm (though especially the upper arm), according to firefox addon Rikaichan. Modern pronunciation is ude according to the same addon. The jutsu is my Shukaku-less version of Gaara's Suna no Kaiwan [Monstrous Sand Arm]**

**Karyūken is an original taijutsu style wherein the user coats him or herself with fire chakra, adding fire damage to each punch or kick. The style is much like the Hyūga Jyūken [Gentle Fist] in that it heavily favours relentless attack, but where the Gentle Fist is an Earth-style taijutsu, the Fire Dragon Fist is a Fire-style taijutsu. The difference is that the Gentle Fist blocks attacks whereas the Fire Dragon Fist is more focused on dodging, in keeping with the elusive nature of fire. **

**Blending with the Uzuken [Whirlpool Fist], a style that likewise is an original creation, which focuses on flowing around your opponent to counter-attack using your opponent's momentum, in keeping with its Water theme, the Uzukaryūken, liberally translated as the Fist of the Whirling Fire Dragon, is the single-most offensive taijutsu style any of them know. **

**Eruptions are graded in ten classes, unimaginatively called Class-1 through Class-10. Class-10 is an extinction-level event. Classes 5 through 9 are merely genocidal events ****of varying intensity****, number 5 being slightly more severe than the Krakatoa eruption back in 1883. C****lasses 1 and 2 are on par with the eruption in Iceland a few years back that blocked most European air travel (Eyjafjallajökull). Not overly dangerous but very disruptive.**

**Parnack is ****_filled_**** with frequent class-5 eruptions. It's what makes the Yahg so badass. **

**My Shepard will be Paragade, by the way. Generally Paragon ideology but won't shy away from Renegade actions to accomplish this. **


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Mass Effect.**

**Holy bajeebus! At the time of writing this AN there are 4400 views, 158 favs, 204 follows and 30 reviews! That's like, half my expectations for the entire fic met in two chapters, given the size of the Naruto/ME section (a grand total of 100 stories, mine included).**

**Thank you all :D Here, have a cookie. (::)  
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**I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but if I don't push it out I'll just sit on it ad infinitum.**

**Updated 2014-12-06.  
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**The Ancients from Alchera**

Feet pounded a steady rhythm as a lone figure ran across the vast sand flat of Parnack's largest continent. Sand billowed in its wake, kicked up from the force of having a humanoid running at slightly over sixty kilometres per hour across its surface. Several curious sand-dwelling rodents emerged from the ground to look at the figure as it sped by, though most burrowed deeper, waiting for the figure to rush past their hiding place. The only things on Parnack that were heavy enough to thump the ground as they walked by were predators.

The figure itself, recognizable as Spectre Shepard to most everyone in the galaxy, noticed none of this. She used the relative tranquillity of the day's starting hours to process what she had learned that morning. Sure, her understanding of the entire fabric of reality had taken a hit when she was introduced to chakra, an energy capable of defying several laws of physics, including but not limited to, gravity, but it had hit home when the initial results from a DNA test had come in just two hours ago.

Taigun had, under some pretty damned close supervision by herself, taken a small blood sample to compare her new genetic code to her old one. The first pass at the data showed that her DNA had mutated from the well-known double helix into three oddly intertwined triple helices. Truth be told, it creeped her out something fierce. She didn't complain about the results though, her bones were stronger, her muscles were denser, her synaptic fire rate had gone through the roof – though Naruto claimed it was only slightly above average –, improving the speed at which she processed sensory input, which had a positive effect on her reflexes, among other things.

Her thoughts were broken as she spotted a disturbance at the edge of the sand flat. She scowled slightly; it wouldn't be the first time that Yahg got curious as to what was going on here. The last one was killed in a single hit by her teacher at the time, Kirabi. A lightning-enhanced lariat, appropriately named **Raiton: Rariatto** [Lightning Release: Lariat] and the Yahg was in pieces.

She turned around a put a finger on her forearm and released the seals on her. Her blond sensei had inscribed a sealing array there to increase 'resistance', as he had said. She soon found that he meant wind resistance. Initially, everything she did took tremendous effort. For the first few days it took all she had to move forward at a snail's pace. Yugito and Kokuo took advantage of that time to cram some chakra theory into her head. She then went back to the tree, still standing in all of its viridian glory even now, and spent a week trying to walk to its top.

'Course, after that Naruto has to rub in the fact that he's practically God – he created something from nothing, what else was she supposed to call him? – by creating a mountain-top lake at a whim for her to learn how to emulate Jesus and walk on water. That took her a month, and afterwards almost all her training was done on the water's surface.

She shook her head to focus on the present. Her eyes swivelled to focus on the disturbance almost directly in front of her, nearly twenty metres ahead of her. A hulking humanoid with black, leathery skin, eight beady eyes, a mouth that wouldn't be out of place on popular representations of demons, and two pointy protrusions from the top of its head that she guessed were ears was steadily walking towards her. She scowled again; she didn't have as many options to take it out as she liked. Her sword was back at the cave – an oversight she'd correct on future runs – and her kunai pouch was filled with the grand total of one kunai.

The Parnack environment meant that Yahg skin was remarkably fire-resistant, so that left piercing **Doton**. That in turn limited her options to a grand total of two jutsu: Rising Rock Pillars and the Earth Flow Spear. Once she had an opening, she'd either have a dead Yahg or a Yahg whose not-so-fireproof organs could be exposed to her flame, depending on whether she took out redundant organs or not.

Her hands came together to form seals, a plan of action having been made. The main difference between the two piercing jutsu was the number of spikes, and that made it easy to choose. Even if she hit dead-on with the single spike of the Flow Spears, the margin for error was simply unacceptable. The multiple spikes of the Rock Pillars, on the other hand, could at least cripple the Yahg if it failed to kill, making further combat much easier. Even with only one working leg, Yahg were not easy opponents to take out.

She formed the three handseals of the jutsu in under one and a half seconds – a new record – and slammed her hands to the ground as she yelled out, "**Doton: Ganchūsō! **[Earth Release: Rising Rock Pillars]" Seven spikes of hardened earth rose from directly beneath the Yahg, piercing its feet, knees, and gut as well as lifting it a little off the ground.

Thirty seconds later it was still twitching and trying to free itself, which meant that she missed the redundant organs. It mattered little, she still had her fire and now readily accessible organs to expose to it. She cackled softly as she released the chakra holding the spikes together, causing the Yahg to fall the half-metre to the ground. Stalking the short distance separating her and the struggling Yahg, she flew through the seven handseals belonging to her new favourite toy in slightly over three and a half seconds before inhaling deeply and taking aim at the Yahg's exposed organs. "**Katon: Gōkakyū! **[Fire Release: Great Fireball]" she bellowed as she spat a large ball of fire at the downed Yahg.

The ball of fire impacted the Yahg and for the first time Shepard heard a Yahg scream. She flinched and covered her ears. It was far higher than she'd expected, comparable to a pig's squeal though heavy bass undertones were audible. It grated on her ears like she was personally dragging a dying pig through the gates to the underworld. That impression wasn't helped by the heavy smell of sulfur emanating from the Yahg's cooking organs in addition to the more traditional scent of burning organs.

Even standing upwind, the three minutes that the Yahg pyre took to burn itself out were hell on her nose. She had no choice but to remain, needing to be certain that the Yahg was dead. When the fire had died and all that was left of the Yahg was a pile of ash, she turned and sprinted away back to the cave, desperately trying not to hurl.

Burning Yahg smelled so much worse than burning Batarian.

– – – – _Two Months Later, Six Months After Alchera, unidentified system – – – –_

An odd space station floated in space dangerously close to a red supergiant. It had none of the sleek elegance common to the Asari, the predatory lines often seen in Turian designs, or the more bulbous designs characteristic of Salarian and Volus architecture. Instead, it was essentially a giant spatula with a massive T-shaped protrusion close to the location where the curve began.

This odd structure is Cronos Station. Not appearing on any maps due to the star's periodic emissions that hid its presence even from the Geth Collective, Cronos Station was an anomaly that appeared to be perfectly harmless. Once every while a ship would dock or depart, but this was far from a frequent occurrence, and an outsider's eye could only conclude that it was some sort of highly classified governmental research base; a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, and smothered in super-secret sauce.

These outsiders would not be entirely wrong. Cronos Station was, as a matter of fact, a highly classified research facility. It just didn't belong to any one government.

Cronos Station was the centre of Cerberus' power, sometimes called the Seat of the Illusive Man. Inside Cronos Station, the Illusive Man – sometimes called Tim, though if he ever heard somebody say it their employment would be terminated post-haste – reigned supreme over the third-largest shadow empire of the galaxy, beaten only by the Shadow Broker and the Geth Collective.

A single short-range radio emission lanced from the station to the shuttle that had exited FTL in relatively close proximity, demanding identification. The sole inhabitant of the shuttle sighed as she opened the comm-link.

"Operative two-two-dash-fiver-alpha-niner-omega-four reporting in for FTF with IL, over," she responded without listening to what the radio operators said. She was here for a very specific purpose with the Illusive Man's full knowledge and approval, nor was it the first time she was called for a meeting at Cronos Station.

"Operative 22-5A9O4, you are cleared to dock at landing bay 21, over," the radio operator responded after a minute.

"Bay 21 acknowledged, control. Operative 22-5A9O4 out," she returned before she closed the connection and directed the shuttle to land at the aforementioned docking bay.

– – – –

The door of the shuttle opened with a hiss, and the five men watched as a very dignified woman walked out, her cool blue eyes assessing everything. For those who didn't know her, Miranda Lawson was the perfect ice queen and Cerberus operative.

He knew better. Miri and himself had some history, and he could see the slight sag at the edge of her right eye, the ever so slight dark patch near the bridge of her nose on the left side for what they were; signs of being run ragged. That was in addition to what she'd confided to him.

Everyone in Cerberus had a confidante registered, for the Illusive Man knew that people involved in top secret work that weren't allowed to vent without repercussions every once in a while became security hazards. The stress of keeping things secret from everyone they cared about reduced them to shells working at maybe half their full efficiency or they talked about their work to the wrong persons, forcing an early termination. He was her confidante, and she had raged and raved for a good three hours – a record for her – about the responsibilities piled upon her after she had failed to retrieve Shepard's corpse, though both of them were glad that Miranda was far too skilled and loyal to just disappear even in light of her biggest blunder.

"Jacob," she said in her usual icy tone, though he could detect the slight quiver that came from prolonged sleep deprivation. "The Illusive Man decided to send a welcoming committee?"

He nodded. "He did, new protocol after one of our arriving agents turned out to have Shadow Broker affiliated guests on board," was his succinct reply. Miranda scoffed

"Idiot," she said scornfully.

"Indeed," Jacob agreed. He turned and nodded to his squad of four. "Dismissed, gentlemen, I can take it from here."

"Sir, yes, sir," they replied as one with a salute before stalking off to the recreational area. They wouldn't actually enter it, naturally. They were to search the shuttle after he had led Miri away because no one was exempt, not even the Illusive Man. Jacob and Miranda started their trek to the Observatory, home to the Illusive Man's chair and the only location on the station that allowed a view of the star. Even the docking stations all faced away from the red supergiant.

"So what's this about, Miri?" Jacob asked quietly. "Still repercussions from Alchera?"

"Most likely," Miranda responded stiffly at the same volume. "Not that I blame him, truth be told. Recovering Shepard would have been beneficial to the extreme, even with her past negative experiences involving the Experimental Research Group."

"Even taking into account that you brought a humanoid alien whose age is counted in the millions?" Jacob asked incredulously.

"Yes, even with that," Miranda responded. "Contrary to popular belief, DNA sequencing and genetic mapping still takes a long time, especially the latter. That is actually part of why I'm here, to present our first quarterly report on the man who answers to Hidan, the self-proclaimed Jashin-sama no Yogensya."

"Yogensya?" Jacob asked curiously, not familiar with the word.

"Prophet," Miranda responded curtly. "Apparently the man follows the way of Jashin, a deity I've never heard of, who is apparently a God of Destruction, or maybe Chaos. They please their god by leaving death and destruction in their wake."

Jacob frowned as they turned a corner, entering a hallway leading to the only elevator leading directly to the Illusive Man's office. "That sounds similar to the Thug resurgence that we had to put down a decade or so ago, back on Earth. Assassins that performed their kills ritualistically to please their goddess... Kali, I believe it was."

"It does indeed," Miranda replied with a nod. "Were it not for the fact that he's clearly an Alchera native from before the planet froze over, I'd say he was human based on appearance alone. It is uncanny how much like us he is." She shrugged. "More fuel for the 'Protheans messed with evolution' conspiracy nuts, I guess."

Her hand reached up and pressed the button to call down the elevator. "I guess," Jacob said with a shrug. They waited in companionable silence as they waited for the elevator to arrive.

"This is where we part ways for now, Miri," Jacob said as the doors opened. Even if he was Miranda's confidante, they weren't allowed everywhere. Due to the confidante system, there were two clearance levels, 'physical entry' and 'information'. The elevator to the Illusive Man's office was very much outside his physical entry clearance unless explicitly ordered otherwise.

"We'll talk again soon, Jake," Miranda said, slipping into her old nickname for the dark-skinned soldier as she gave the machine instructions to deposit her at the Observatory.

Jacob gave her a two-fingered salute as the doors slid shut. "Sure thing, Miri. Just give me a beep if you want to rant for a while."

"Will do, Jacob," Miranda replied with a wan smile before the doors closed. She could hear the soft hum of the mass effect field enveloping the elevator. It wasn't the cheapest of solutions, but the person who decided that elevators should be equipped with their own mass effect fields to speed up elevator transit was a saint, in her opinion. The trip from where she was to Observatory took fifteen minutes a year ago, now it was done in three.

When she arrived at the top, the doors hissed open. She was greeted by a sight that most people would have proclaimed beautiful. A large portion of the view was taken up by the red supergiant that was the favoured environment for Cronos Station – because Cronos Station had to move once in a while, a stationary opponent is a dead opponent according to the Illusive Man – while the rest of the view was filled with the inky black void of space, interspersed by the bright specks of light of far-off stars. She wasn't poetic enough to proclaim the infinite void of space beautiful, but she acknowledged that it wasn't the worst of views. If only her boss wasn't in this very room, undoubtedly ready to punish her again for failing him on Alchera. He was rather petty that way, to be frank.

"Miranda," her boss greeted her from his chair in the exact middle of the Observatory. "Punctual as always." _At least he's still using my given name. I might actually make it out of here alive._

She nodded silently in response.

"Report," was his curt command.

"Subject 22-8941, Hidan," she said without preamble. "Found frozen, but alive, in a glacier on Alchera aproximately three months following the initiation of the search for Shepard, in the wake of a suspicious Class-3 volcanic event. The source of that event we've still not uncovered," Miranda stated with a small grimace. In light of the failure to retrieve Shepard not finding out what had caused the eruption was a small thing, but it grated on her nonetheless.

"Subject claimed immortality, and the investigating team has reason to believe him by now. We have vivisected him while alive and fully conscious – none of our sedatives work for more than fifteen minutes –, literally detached organs while he was cut open, and the subject remained coherent and the organs active. Destroying the detached organs caused a replacement organ to grow inside the subject."

The Illusive Man nodded once, though she could see the minute frown that meant he didn't like that she had risked the subject. "Any difficulties restraining the subject?"

"More than we'd like, sir. The subject's raw physical strength is enough to break through anything short of titanium bindings."

The Illsuive Man raised a single eyebrow. "Anything else, Miranda?"

Miranda nodded. "Three things, sir. The first is the subject's DNA." She tapped her omni-tool to project an image of the strange DNA. "Our DNA experts have classed this a triple tri-strand. Three intertwined triple helices. Sequencing and mapping is currently underway but not expected to bear fruit for quite some time due to the subject's alien physiology.

"The second point of curiosity is a pair of bioelectrical processes, one in the brain, one in the rest of the body, that do not appear to serve any real function at first glance. Further investigation has commenced because no one on the team believes that bioelectrical processes of such magnitude serve no function. We've just not found it yet.

"Third, there appears to be a secondary set of veins running throughout the subject's body. A strange energy is running through them, but we've held off on removing it since it's not an organ and we are uncertain if it will regrow like the organs do, or if we are capable of transplanting it without damage. That concludes our findings so far," Miranda finished her report in the same professional manner that she started it.

"I see," was all the Illusive Man said before he fell into thoughtful silence. Miranda started fidgeting slightly when the silence passed the five minute mark.

After a full fifteen minutes, the Illusive Man spoke up. "Operative Lawson, you are officially reassigned from Project Alchera to Project Overlord. Report to Aite no more than two weeks from now. You will, naturally, be expected to fulfil your other responsibilities in tandem with your work on Overlord. You will receive more details later. Dismissed."

"Yes, sir," was all she said as she swiftly turned on her heels and hurried back into the elevator. When the doors had closed, she sighed in relief. That had gone far better than she had hoped, though she didn't appreciate being assigned to work with that fool Archer. He was likely to throw caution to the wind and transform Project Overlord to the next instance of a mess similar to what Shepard dealt with when she hunted for Saren.

_Note to self: find a way to thank Shepard for cleaning up the house. S__afety precautions __a__re there for a reason __and those fools in Experimental Research had thrown them to the wind_. Most people would call her thoughts that Shepard had survived crashing on Alchera lunacy, but she'd seen the Spectre do impossible things, what was a little unscheduled, unassisted planetary descent?

A wave of fatigue swept over Miranda as the elevator made its way down. She shakily reached into a pocket and pulled out a syringe filled with a milky white-yellow substance. She sighed in bliss as the contents entered her bloodstream.

Thank God for stims.

– – – – _Two __Months Later, Eight Months After Alchera, __Parnack__– – – –_

A blond male and a red-headed female could be seen dancing in the sweltering summer's heat in the middle of the largest sand flat that graced the surface of Parnack. Their moves were swift, gracious, and without hesitation. Their balance was nigh perfect and their coordination flawless as the pair moved with and against the other.

Until one looked closer and realized that there were entirely too many kicks and punches being thrown to qualify their moving as a dance. The female aimed a punch at the male's gut only for the male to sidestep, lock the female's arm in place using his own arm and his body, before using the newly acquired leverage to throw the woman to the ground. The woman managed to free her arm as she was being redirected to the ground and rolled with the blow. Her feet lashed out during the roll towards the male's chin, who dodged the incoming appendages by cartwheeling away. The woman, now solidly on her feet, shrouded her entire body in fire before rushing the blond and calling out in a language not native to Parnack; "**Karyū Hakke: Rokujūyon ken! **[Fire Dragon Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Fists]" Her arms seemed to blur as she rained her fists upon her opponent's body, who sported a massive grin on his face.

Truly, Naruto mused as Shepard attempted to pound his internal organs to mush, their student had come a long way. Eight months ago she was essentially meat and bones, three months later she woke up on this hellish planet completely reconstructed, nine days after that she was tree-walking – more generally known as surface-clinging – with abandon, two weeks after that she was performing her training practically exclusively on water, thanks to a convenient crater on top of a nearby mountain, absolutely humongous chakra reserves, and a **Suiton: Bakusui Shōha **[Water Release: Exloding Water Colliding Wave] so that she could learn to walk on water. The other aspects of her training were highly focused on the practical shinobi arts; chakra control, ninjutsu, taijutsu, iryojutsu and genjutsu. Some chakra theory was thrown in and they made sure that her technological skills were maintained by pitting her against broken machinery and Taigun-created firewalls every few days, but the more traditional – and time-consuming – shinobi teachings like mathematics, ciphers, cryptography, anatomy, and stealth? All taken care of by her military education. Even language only needed a refresher rather than requiring starting from the beginning, apparently Shepard had a Japanese roommate for a few years and Japanese matched their native language perfectly, even down to the way it was written. Evolution was weird that way.

Potential pitfalls like a first kill were encountered before she even entertained the idea of going into the military, thanks to a slaver raid on her home colony when she was young. It may not have been the best circumstances to earn a first kill, but a first kill was a first kill and they weren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Mentally she already was a high-level Jōnin, if not a Kage-level ninja, she just needed her shinobi skills brought up to par. Naruto thanked his lucky stars that the **Kage Bunshin** was perfectly capable of transferring muscle memory in addition to knowledge, it made everything go so much faster. Shepard only needed to do the kata to ensure that she had the required flexibility, actually practising the kata was done by her clones, even if she could only have two up simultaneously for eight hour stretches because of the mental overload from dispelling clones. They had decided not to teach her the sealing arts due to simple time constraints. They only had two years before shit was going to start hitting the fan and Fūinjutsu required years of dedicated study unless one was an Uzumaki with **Kage Bunshin **available, in which case it only took approximately three months to become a master.

Shepard had taken to nin- and tai-jutsu like a fish took to water, and progressed at a speed beyond even their most optimistic estimates, though her genjutsu was limited to dispelling and casting the most basic of illusions. She had mastered the first stage of earth _and_ fire manipulation in a month, where even the fastest of them had taken two – Naruto counted his cumulative time taken utilizing **Kage Bunshin**, rather than the clock-time passed – for a single nature. Naruto simply took it as proof he was _just that awesome_ with the **Banbutsu Sōzō**. Three and a half months later, she had completed stage two of each element and was ready to be introduced to A- and S-rank jutsu of each element, thanks in no small part to the Kage-level reserves he'd given her when her body was recreated practically from the ground up. They left her mind intact initially, but the reconstruction forced the brain to modify itself to include a chakra network and the associated neural process to generate the Yin part of chakra. This was, apparently, allowed by the people Up There.

Naruto shook his head to re-focus on the present, where a heavily panting Shepard stood a short ways away. Her hands were raised in the traditional **Karyūken **default stance – right fist in front of her sternum so that she could block attempt to strike at her solar plexus, her left fist in front of her, shoulder at 45 degrees to her body, elbow at 90 degrees, left foot in front, right foot behind at a 45 degree angle – and her face was trained on his own sternum so that she could see every limb on his body clearly. Many people got by by looking their opponent in the eye and reading their intentions that way, but Shepard wouldn't have that luxury in an existence where polarized faceplates were common.

He supposed he would have been near-death from Shepard's assault... if he had organs. There were distinct advantages to being a mass of pure chakra in that he didn't need to eat, drink, sleep, or even have organs. Naturally he _could_ give himself working innards instead of just projecting a human appearance with his chakra, but he only really did so when he was alone with Yugito. Sex was too good to pass up, regardless of form. _Thinking of forms, _the blond thought, _we still haven't shown Shepard our full beast forms. _He chuckled darkly, his tails swishing behind him in anticipation. _That's going to be a great surprise once we finally do reveal them. __Oh the look she'll wear._

He was nothing if not fair, so he would do nothing for a few seconds to represent a hard-to-kill opponent that just got hit by Shepard's brutal assault. He felt justified in doing so, despite the brutality – and there were _very_ few taijutsu moves more brutal than the Sixty-Four Fists of the Eight Trigrams, Fire Dragon style, and all of the ones that were required five or more open Celestial Gates – he was certain that someone like the Five Kage, Kabuto or Madara would have lived through it, though not without injury. His grin widened when he saw Shepard fly through the Monkey, Boar, and Tiger handseals, recognizing the technique that she was going to use to capitalize on his self-imposed immobility. She inhaled deeply as she held the Tiger seal and kneaded her chakra, and brought her right hand to her mouth. She bellowed, "**Katon: Gōka Messhitsu!** [Fire Release: Great Flame Demolisher]," spitting a large sphere of flame in his direction. The jutsu was an upgraded Great Fireball in every facet of the jutsu except chakra cost, requiring approximately six times as much chakra as the fireball.

Naruto's grin split his face from ear to ear, quite a bit more literally than mortals were capable of, as he held out his right hand; he'd seen what he wanted to see in the two hours that this no holds barred spar had lasted. "**Gakidō: Fūjutsu Kyūin **[Preta Path: Blocking Technique Absorption Seal]," he calmly said and a translucent spherical barrier sprung to life around him. When the flame of Shepard's jutsu hit the barrier, it shrunk until all that was left was a panting redhead barely capable of standing on her own feet and a grinning blond who looked as fresh as he always did.

"Excellent job, Shepard," Naruto commended her. "You've shown all that you need to start the next part of your training and then some." He threw her a ration bar, created moments before with his chakra. It wasn't a perfect substitute for actual food, but it'd do until they could get food that didn't try to kill you with bacteria and viruses even after roasting it.

"Thanks, sensei," Shepard got out between pants as she caught the bar with ease. It was the definition of tasteless, but it was stuffed full of everything she needed to get through the day. "So, what is the next part of training?" she asked curiously once she had finished eating and regained her breath.

"First off, we're starting on **Yōton **in a moment," he said, eliciting a smile from his student. "Secondly, we've finally figured out an insulating material that won't allow **Raiton** to pass it by so you'll be learning that. Thirdly, we're going to do the unnecessary but very useful stage three of elemental manipulation." A grin appeared on his face that promised a lot of pain in her future. "Trust me, that's going to hurt."

"How so, sensei?" she asked. Surely it couldn't be as bad as the torture they called training, could it? "Also, why would **Raiton** bypass insulating material? It's electricity isn't it?"

"Not exactly," he said with a small shake of his head. "**Raiton **is electrically charged chakra that only gets converted to lightning laced with chakra when it leaves the immediate vicinity of your body, same as with the other elements. Unfortunately, your shield generator is inside the area where it is still electrically charged chakra, and thus the comparison is far more similar to using an electrically insulating material to block thermal energy transfer. However, the chakra is still electrically charged so it still shorts out your generator. Something to do with band gaps and forbidden energy states becoming allowed, I didn't pay a lot of attention to Taigun-kun's techno-babble," he finished with a shrug. Shepard sweatdropped at his attitude but nodded to show she understood what was going on, and probably better than the blond did.

"And the third stage of elemental manipulation?" she asked curiously with a hint of impatience. Naruto had that tendency to answer the second question first and never answer the first unless you pressed him for it. Anderson did, too. Perhaps it was something that came with age?

"Unlike stage 1 and 2, training for stage 3 kills more people than jutsu performed by people that accomplished it," he said seriously. "For example, stage 3 for fire requires being set on fire. You will have completed the training when you can manipulate the flame to not burn you."

"Isn't that the same as the chakra shroud for the **Karyūken**?"

He shook his head. "No, it's not. Your chakra is a part of you, and the only way your chakra can hurt yourself is if you overload on chakra. The shroud used in the **Karyūken** will not harm you as long as you keep the flames orange or cooler. Only if you concentrate the flames enough that they become hot enough to turn white or even black, not that the latter is in mortal reaches unless you have a **Sharingan**, do you run the risk of burning yourself with your own fire chakra shroud. Normal fire will burn you regardless, unless you infuse your chakra with the fire so that it won't. This is not as easy as it sounds.

"I know of three hundred people who have attempted it. All but fourteen died from their injuries even with skilled medics supervising."

Shepard gulped, and she almost didn't ask her next question. "And the other natures?"

"**Doton** requires you to cause an earthquake of at least magnitude eight with nothing but your chakra. **Raiton** requires that you be struck by lightning without it striking any of your organs or overloading your nervous system. **Yōton **requires you to bathe in lava without getting melted," the blond replied. Shepard gulped again, that didn't sound entirely sane or healthy. _Then again, it _is _Naruto I'm dealing with. He left sanity behind in the dust a long time ago._

"If you can manage all of them before we leave Parnack, I'll instruct you in one of my personal jutsu, the **Yōton: Rasenryūkuchi** [Lava Release: Spiraling Dragon Mouth]." He held out a hand, palm up, in Shepard's direction.

"So let's get started, shall we?" he asked with a tilt of his head. Shepard nodded and grabbed his hand.

"**Hiraishin**," Naruto said, and with a yellow flash they relocated to a nearby volcano.

– – – – _Two__ Months Later, __One Year__ After Alchera, Parnack – – – –_

"Soooo," Shepard drawled nervously through the full-face gas mask, the only thing she wore other than a fireproof hair cover, as her two female teachers tied her to a large wooden structure – essentially a large rectangular platform made from wooden beams, the base of which was enveloped with straw so that it would burn swiftly – using specially created fireproof rope while her male teachers were out and about messing with Yahg. Taigun kept a vigilant eye on the horizon for signs of potentially interfering Yahg. "Remind me again why stage three of elemental manipulation is necessary?" Shepard tried to move her fingers, but the rope was tied very tight and she failed miserably.

"Completing stage three means your control is good enough that you can start launching jutsu of that element without vocalisation or even a single handseal," Yugito replied calmly. She put action to word by turning her head away from the structure and launching a thin stream of flame that quickly widened to an absurd width. Shepard recognized is as the **Katon: Gōka Mekkyaku **[Fire Release: Great Flame Annihilation], launched without so much as a whisper or a twitch of her hands. She couldn't help but whistle appreciatively.

"Silent and seal-less? That can't be free," Shepard said. Nothing that good ever came without having strings attached.

Yugito nodded. "It's not. Aside from having a very good chance of dying, jutsu cast without hand-seals or vocalization guzzle chakra. The exact increase is unknown because no one ever bothered to find out, but you can expect to use ten to fifteen times - at minimum - the amount of chakra per jutsu or per second of every jutsu."

"Then why would anyone undergo stage three in the first place?" she asked incredulously, while idly wondering why there was an increase in the first place. _Perhaps the seals and words are a form of mnenonic, and by skipping them you stop your subconscious from helping you? _She vaguely recalled her biotic instructor mentioning something along similar lines as a reason why silent biotics were reserved only for Asari Commandoes with centuries of experience. A stray thought hit her at this point; _are biotics and chakra related? _

"Because it furthers understanding of the element," Yugito explained patiently. "Allowing you to waste less chakra when casting elemental jutsu, as well as help you decide what jutsu to use when. With your limited chakra reserves, there is such a thing as overkill. Additionally, it gives you an excellent trump card in case you're ever captured. An enemy familiar only with the concept of jutsu requiring vocalization and handseals will not expect you to be able to do so without either."

Shepard nodded, seeing the logic in the statement. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to do this, but with the knots used by the pair of women she figured she didn't really have a choice. She let out a resigned sigh.

"So what exactly do I have to do here? Naruto wasn't very clear."

"Your sole task is to prevent the flames from burning you, even as they lap against your skin," Kokuo said. "You are to reach out to the chakra present in the flame using naught but your raw chakra, and prevent it from harming you. Use of elemental chakra is strictly prohibited."

"And how does that help in control of **Katon**? Is the chakra in natural fire that different from, say, natural earth?" Shepard asked curiously, never having bothered with feeling the natural chakra around her. She was busy enough as is.

Kokuo nodded. "It is. The chakra in nature takes on characteristics of the element that it comes into contact with. By allowing the chakra of natural fire to envelop you, attuning your chakra to it, and making it respond to your will, you reach a far more intimate understanding of the nature of fire and can use fire jutsu without handseals or vocalisation, at the aforementioned cost. It is possible to reach sufficient levels of control to accomplish this without completing the third stage, however that requires time we are not in possession of."

"Right," Shepard said, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice. As much as she was a not-so-closet pyromaniac she wasn't looking forward to actually being set on fire.

Neither Kokuo or Yugito were fooled by Shepard's false bravado, but elected to not say anything. Yugito grabbed a sealing scroll and unsealed a Yahg-made item that was perfect for the situation: a triple-barrel flame thrower. She could easily ignite the pyre on her own, but then it wouldn't be natural fire and that would defeat the point of the exercise. She took aim and fumbled slightly with the trigger, it was designed for hands twice the size of her own. "We'll keep watch, Shepard. Good luck," Yugito said as she pulled the trigger for all of two seconds, aiming at the base of the large wooden structure. The flames washed over the wood and straw, easily igniting the latter. Within a few minutes, the entire structure was ablaze. They could vaguely hear Shepard's screaming, muffled by the gas mask, over the roar of the raging flames. Yugito grimaced. She did this herself before she became the new Nibi and it took three hours of agony before she was capable of atuning the flames to her chakra.

_This_, Shepard thought, _surely has to be what Hell is like_. The raw heat blasting her tied-up body was threatening to send her to Morpheus' embrace even as the flames themselves embraced her with their fiery hugs of excruciating agony. Shepard lost track of time as she yelled herself hoarse from the unadulterated pain of having her skin burned off. The loud roar of the raging inferno filled her ears even as her eyes were entranced by the alluring dance of red and orange in front of her eyes in an ever shifting, ever changing, phantasmagoria eventually allowing her to tear her mind's conscious processes away from the pain, though her subconscious still decided that screaming was a good idea. The newly found clarity of mind allowed Shepard to send out tendrils of her chakra to the flame around her, trying to make contact with the very essence of fire.

The flame rebuffed her by darting around the tendrils. She who was probably the greatest champion of the flame – taking practically every opportunity to set things ablaze if it wouldn't compromise the mission – was rebuffed by the very element she adored. She sent out more tendrils with more force, making sure to increase their width so her fiery opponent wouldn't be able to flow around the tendrils that easily.

Once again, she failed. Again and again she tried with tendrils of ever increasing width and force, and again and again she failed. The flame darted under and around her feelers, never touching or connecting. Ever elusive and unattainable.

Shepard froze and wanted to smack herself. _I truly am an idiot sometimes_, she mused idly. _Fire is aggressive, elusive, and ethereal, so to capture the fire I, too, need to be elusive, aggressive, and ethereal. Brute force doesn't solve everything, much as I wish it sometimes did. _

Her next tendrils were much thinner and sent out far more delicately than anything she had tried so far. She allowed her tendrils to approach the chakra in the fire, which once again danced out of the way. This time, though, she was ready and her tendrils started dancing alongside the chakra she sought to attune herself with. The fire seemed to respond to her efforts, and she cancelled all but one tendril so that she could focus on the single tendril that seemed to have picked up a dance partner. They looped and swirled around each other in a complex dance. At the pyre's side, Yugito grinned. It seemed her student had figured out the trick, and it only took her two hours or so. Attuning chakra was a two-way process.

It was in the middle of a figure eight that it happened. Shepard felt the fire connect with her chakra, and the most incredible feeling of _understanding_ came over her. For a brief moment, she felt like she _was_ the flame; aggressive, elusive, ethereal, yet lazy and hungry; always seeking more to consume in the easiest way possible. For the shortest of instants, she was _one_ with fire, and it felt incredible. It felt like she could take on everything and everyone in her path, obliterating all her enemies with ease. Burn away their presence in the mortal coil with nary a thought, or engulf their very essence in a raging conflagration that wouldn't even leave enough to pass through the Gates.

And then the pain returned despite her successful efforts to stop the flames from harming her. She may have been momentarily distracted from it by seeking to attune herself to fire, but her skin was still halfway to peeling off from the heat. She needed to get off, but the rope tying her to the wooden beams was specifically made to be able to withstand hundreds of thousands of degrees Celsius. She struggled a bit in vain hope that her newfound elemental friend would burn the rope regardless, but she got an idea when she felt a little bit of the structure giving way.

The rope may have been fireproof, the structure that she was tied to wasn't. She concentrated the flames on the wood holding the rope in place, taking care not to burn too much of the wood too fast or the entire structure could come tumbling down. Within moments, the wood had crumbled to ash, not capable of taking the white-hot flames Shepard had directed to then. Muscles and tendons screaming from the burns, she slowly stood up and stumbled off the still burning pyre.

_Three more to go_, she thought as she succumbed to the blissful darkness of unconsciousness.

– – – –

**Original Jutsu: **

**Karyū Hakke: Rokujūyon Ken**; this taijutsu move is essentially a **Jyūken Hakke: Rokujūyon Shō **[Gentle Fist Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms]using fists instead of palms, except one aims to do damage directly to internal organs in place of the chakra network. Unless the user has a Byakugan, knowledge of the opponents anatomy is required for the attack to do maximum damage.

– – – –

**A/N: I don't quite remember if Cerberus bases going rogue – or taking unsanctioned measures to get results – was the canon explanation (it's been a while since I played ME2) for their cockups, but in every one of the fanfics that use it, it's almost immediately dismissed by Shepard as ludicrous. So I wondered, _what if Cerberus aren't total idiots and those projects _were _taking unsanctioned measures__? _Besides, an intelligent antagonist is so much healthier for the story than a dumb one that gets curbstomped. **

**The Illusive Man is still not pleased at Miranda for failing to retrieve Shepard's body, and is therefore not exactly thinking clearly. Considering Cerberus is essentially a revenge-trip against non-humans – in my opinion –, that's not an out of left field reaction. **

**The Thug resurgence (mind the capital T) mentioned by Jacob is actually the group that Jashinism is based on, the Thuggee, according to the naruto wikia. I did some additional research, agreed with the statement, and used it. **

**Next Chapter: A glimpse at the rest of the galaxy trawling along, and Shepard's graduation exam. There's a reason I didn't have B appear that much in these few chapters (other than my difficulty writing proper dialogue for him), his main responsibility was ensuring that more than a few Yahg tribes would band together to take the group out. Do not expect the Yahg to feature much when the group leaves Parnack due to massive population reduction. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or Naruto. **

**A big thanks to reviewer Trife for pointing out that I was making Shepard rather overpowered. This chapter, plus edits I made to the previous one, should address most of that. **

**I moved translations to a bottom footnote starting this chapter to decrease breaks in flow. If the translation is not a surprise I save for later, it will be listed there.**

**The Ancients From Alchera**

Whatever happens, excluding galactic extinction events spanning all lifeforms that can even remotely be called 'alive', the galaxy as a whole moves on. While many lives _were_ altered in the wake of the Sovereign's attack on the Citadel a month ago and the destruction of the SSV Normandy three weeks later, most were at worst peripherally affected and continued about their lives the way they had always done. For the vast majority, that meant that they loved, argued, had kids, got married or divorced, and generally tried to go through the motions of life to achieve a somewhat happy conclusion. These lives were otherwise utterly unremarkable. A handful had lives worth recording for a few moments; those with uncommon or dangerous jobs, those with exotic diseases, and those who were in the right place at the right time to get some limelight before once again fading into obscurity.

And then there was the rest; those very few individuals whose life was worthy of being called 'plot'. The members of this last group all had something special about them that set them apart from the common person. Whether they were criminal masterminds responsible for the stability of the most law-less region of space, Black Ops agents that had attracted the eyes of the Norns, or something more mundane; all of them had in common the fact that they were politically significant or were involved in politically significant events. Another common occurrence among those with plot-worthy lives was that they tended to gravitate towards another. As friends, lovers, or bitter enemies, they couldn't help but interact.

It should therefore come as no surprise to anyone that the Citadel, the so-called 'Heart of the Galaxy', and the Omega Asteroid – often called the 'Terminus Citadel' – housed a fair number of those few individuals. It should come as even less of a surprise that communication between the Citadel and Omega was frequent, and frequently highly encrypted. What _would_ surprise most people, had they known about one particular highly-encrypted channel on one particular day slightly over a month after Sovereign's assault on the Citadel, was the identity of the two individuals. Both were high-profile, purple-skinned Asari in positions of leadership, but all similarities ended there. Where one of them was dressed conservatively, holding a glass of fine Thessian vintage and held herself with all the demeanour of nobility, the other wore a slightly revealing black leather jumpsuit with contrasting white leather jacket, preferred human vodka for its nice kick while not being as dangerous as ryncol, and carried herself with the air of a hardened criminal. The first had striking stormy grey-green eyes that showed the permanent serenity she was known for, but if one looked deeper they would see that she gazed upon existence with shrewdness found in very, very few. The other had misty blue eyes reflecting the ocean near which she was born, but there was no serenity shown in their depths. There was a hardness in them that came only with centuries of experience in dealing with the underbelly of civilization.

"_Are you absolutely certain of this, Celia?" _the blue-eyed Asari asked with narrowed eyes in response to something the other had said. "_You realize this is going to be extremely bad for business, I hope?" _

"I trust in Reah, Aria," Celia replied, somewhat testily. "She said that there was a ninety-nine point five percent match."

"_Damnit,"_ Aria said bluntly. "_Reah does know better than to fuck with either of us, so she wouldn't have."_ Celia watched stonily as Aria slammed a hand on a nearby table, slightly denting the surface. A harsh sound could be heard as the vase's shards spread all over Aria's apartment and Celia could not help but give a small chuckle. Perhaps now she would purchase a more beautiful vase _and_ not put it near the edge of a table? "_How long, Celia?" _Aria eventually asked once she calmed down a minute later.

"Two years, six months, and thee days in Galactic Standard time according to the latest projections. Give or take a month, assuming the original data is, in fact, accurate."

"_That's _something _at least," _Aria responded. "_Even if it isn't all that long, __it's enough time to get back into shape and clean ship __over here__. __I assume you'll be coercing the others to start R&D?" _

Celia nodded. "Naturally, even if I can't mention our enemy by name I'll think of something."

Aria gave a satisfied nod of her own. "_Good. In the meantime, since you will likely not do so, I'll be hiring Quarians. A whole __fucking __lot of Quarians. __Maybe __then __we can actually get something done in those two and a half years.__"_

Celia raised a painted-on eyebrow – such clever little things the humans introduced to the galaxy – at Aria's statement. Utilizing the technological skills of the Quarians was an angle that she'd completely overlooked, but could generate some very good results. It was such a shame that hiring Quarians was so politically inconvenient, and she couldn't afford to give the Matriarchs a reason to replace her at such a critical junction. All the candidates to replace her were excellent choices for peace-time governing, she'd give them that, but they would not fare well with what was to come. "Will you need assistance in meeting their price? Quarians don't work purely for credits, you know."

"_Of course I know, and I've got a few ships lying around that'll help seal the deal," _Aria said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "_Nothing overly fancy for the most part, but __the oldest ship is younger than _anything_ in the Flotilla__."_

"I was just checking, as the humans would say. They may ask for more than ships, and I don't recall you talking about having uncolonised dextro planets just lying about," Celia said, placing a slight sarcastic lilt on the last three words. Aria scowled.

"_I don't, but it'll be fine. I know how to play Quarians, Celia." _

"I was not suggesting otherwise, Aria," Celia said serenely with a hint of amusement on her face. Even after all this time, it was still fun raising Aria's hackles, though the list of people that could do that and get away with it was exceedingly small and featured her own name at the top. "I was merely ensuring that you'd covered all options and possibilities. Our very existence as a species is on the line, after all."

"_Indeed,"_ Aria responded once she was done gritting her teeth. She never did like it when someone inferred she wasn't capable or prepared, even if that person was Celia. _I hope you do realize there'll be _consequences_for your ribbing __later, __c'taela_, Aria thought with an internal cackle. Outwardly, her expression softened ever so slightly, which would have most people scrambling to find the real Aria for this one was obviously a fake. Celia was not most people. _"Hang in there, alright?"_

"I will," Celia replied in a soft but firm voice. "I don't intend to be on the losing side of this conflict,_c'taela_." She glanced at the chronometer and sighed. "It's time to get back to work. Goddess guide you and brighten your day._"_

"_Nor do I. __Goddess grant you the wisdom to walk the path of life without obstacles, c'taela," _Aria responded in kind. She watched as Aria leaned forward and winked with a mischievous grin before the screen went blank. She shivered slightly, the last time Aria disconnected a call like that it led to events that left her unable to properly sit down for a week.

Celia rose gracefully from her chair, her long robe with traditional embroidery – even if the material was not, simply because human silk was so vastly superior to any Asari produce – gently dropping down to her ankles. She set off at a brisk pace that reflected the speed of her thoughts. _Now, how to get Valern and Sparatus on board?_ Numerous arguments were proposed and rejected in the time it took her to walk from her chair to her private skycar, before she finally settled on something that should work. She only really needed one of the two to comply, though both would be preferable for the sake of galactic unity. She didn't doubt that Anderson, who looked like a shoe-in for the new Human seat since he had Shepard's approval, would agree with her. Anderson trusted Shepard, and this was something stemming from a warning given by Shepard.

"_The Reapers are coming, Madam Councillor. Hundreds upon hundreds of behemoths equally as durable as Sovereign are headed here to kill us all."_

Councillor Celia Tevos had her argument to convince Sparatus and Valern.

They had encountered only one Sovereign, true, but any race capable of building something like Sovereign wouldn't have stopped at just one, would they?

– – – –

"Fucking hell, I did not need that right now," Aria groused as she worked several kinks from her shoulders. "Bloodhounds at the gates, mercs starting to run rampant throughout the streets, and now giant fucking metallic squids from Dark Space intent on ruining everything?

"Fuck. That. If it was anyone other than Celia and Reah I'd probably have kicked their asses before the first word came out of their mouth." A moment's pause. "Well, except for Liselle," she amended. She ruthlessly quashed the pending distracting thoughts of her daughter and concentrated on the immediate problem; mercs. Specifically the Blood Pack, Eclipse, and Blue Suns. The Talons weren't causing problems, their leader was wise enough to adhere to Omega's only rule; Do Not Fuck With Aria T'Loak.

The Blood Pack was getting bolder lately, going to places they had no business being, and needed a reminder of their place on Omega. The Eclipse were slowly doing much the same, often making hostile contact with the Blood Pack that regularly killed more bystanders than they did mercs, and the Blue Suns were in the shadows egging both groups on while only being peripherally involved in the combat. Gavorn could deal with the local Eclipse chapter, led by a Salarian named Jaroth. For all his bluster, he had no biotics and was technologically inept by Salarian standards. He knew how to run a tight ship and possessed skill with weapons well above Salarian standards for good, but so was Lieutenant Gavorn. More than a few dancers were former Commandos so she did not foresee any issue taking the local Eclipse down a peg or three unless they were hiding Commandos of their own. She was pretty damn sure they weren't, but she didn't get where she was without being cautious. The Blood Pack, on the other hand, _required_ her personal attention. While Garm's minions may not have been much of anything at all, Garm himself was an accomplished Battlemaster. He was biotically powerful enough to contend with her and had freaky fast regeneration, even by Krogan standards. She needed to spend a little while lubricating her biotics, and then she would deal with the Blood Pack situation personally. Hopefully, her show of force would enlighten the Blue Suns to back off. If it didn't, then she would deal with them too. She doubted she needed to, Tarak was more intelligent than his predecessor and displayed a capacity for logical thought uncommon to Batarians outside of the Heaven and Celestial Caste or SIU personnel.

A massive shitstorm was coming and she would brook no dissent among her ranks. _Omega will not fall_, she silently vowed. She had sunk far too many hours into this place, carving out a not-so-little slice of galactic space to rule over to let it fall to _anything_, including metallic space-squids with delusions of divinity.

But before she could deal with any of that, she had to get back into shape. It had been far too long since she took the time to practice biotics, and she would need her biotics running smoothly again if she was going to tussle with Garm. He was old enough to potentially be more powerful than she was – in fact, she was pretty sure he was more powerful than her even if she _had_ kept up with her training –, but she had an edge; 'finesse' was not a word found in many Krogan vocabularies, while the Asari _prided_ themselves on finesse.

She lifted her omni-tool's microphone to her mouth. "Grizz, I'll be at my range for the next hour. No interruptions," she barked at her bodyguard. She shut down her omni-tool without waiting for an answer and walked into her personal practice range less than a minute's walk from her apartment.

Flinging her jacket onto a nearby table, she performed a few stretches to get the blood flowing. After she was done she stuck her hand out towards one of the targets. A light blue _something_ – vaguely oval in form, but there any definition ended – rushed towards it, and when it made contact it was pulled towards her. A grin lit up her face as she snapped her fingers and a dark blue, nearly black, orb sped from her hand towards the now air-borne target. Upon impact it detonated with an ever so satisfying _boom. _She could feel the shockwave of the biotic explosion rumbling through her chest, and she revelled in the reverberations going through her ribs. It had been far too long since she used her biotics for something more than looking impressive. With a satisfied nod, she flicked her hand at the target, specifically crafted to be able to withstand biotic explosions, and another light blue _something_ rushed towards it. When it made contact the target was hurled away, impacting with a sickening crunch on the far wall mere moments later. She clenched her outstretched hand and a **Singularity** made its way down the range. She gave a mental command for it to stop when it was at the desired location, and clicked her tongue when she saw it continue to move for a full second after she told it to stop, though it did stop at a location sufficiently close to the other targets present at the range that they were pulled into the singularity. "Damnit, I'm more rusty than I thought," she groused. She dropped her outstretched fist, and with her other hand flung her personally created biotic attack at the target trapped in the singularity. The **Flare**'s unique effect of strengthening biotic detonations – in addition to massive damage from impact – was seen when the target was shredded into tiny little bits. She glared at the scorched steel left behind by the detonation, thoroughly annoyed. _That wasn't nearly as powerful as I __was capable of even a century ago__. __Fucking hell I allowed the rust to pile up._

In rapid succession, she ran through the rest of her Commando exercises; sustaining multiple S**ingularity** fields at once, detonating more than one biotic effect using a single trigger – though multiple primers, no one was good enough to let a single biotic primer explode more than once –, steering **Warp** fields mid-flight, and her favourite exercise; sustaining multiple biotic fields, from **Singularity **to **Lift**, while manoeuvring several **Warps** to detonate all of them in one go. Her maximum before she lost control was six fields for two minutes plus two **Warps**, though that was mostly academic. She needed a meditative state to get that many effects going simultaneously, making it absolutely useless for combat. Near the end of the hour she sat down while a bottle of water and seethed in light of her performance. It was absolutely pathetic for an Asari with two hundred years as a Huntress and another three as a Commando before she took control of Omega at 650, a century ago.

She had barely half of the control she had two centuries ago, though her power hadn't decreased as much as she initially feared. Fortunately, re-acclimating the body to high levels of biotics was easier than acclimating the body for the first time.

The amount of time she would need to get back into shape depended on how swiftly the mercs got the message to stay the fuck down and not mess with the tentative order she had managed to achieve on her station after she took over the lead spot, but she figured she could get pretty far before the ETA counted down all the way to zero.

She dismissed the biotic fields currently active on the range, and sent a message to alert the maintenance crew while cooling off. She had Quarians to hire, mercs to deal with, and resources to consolidate in light of the coming shitstorm. _Omega will _not _fall, _she repeated to herself with a determined glint in her eye. Making a mental note to order her Commando dancers to keep up their practive, she walked out of the practice range and made her way into her sanctum sanctorum; Afterlife. It was time to get to work.

– – – – _Two Years Post-Alchera, Parnack – – – –_

"Alright, Shepard," Naruto said excitedly. "It's almost time for your graduation exam."

She eyed him warily from where she sat on the cave's floor. She remembered what happened the last time he talked about an exam. And the one before that, and the one before _that_. As it turned out, her first kill of a Yahg had been something of a fluke, despite – or because of – the ease with which she took him down. Due to the Yahg culture, only the least able-bodied individuals were sent on scouting missions. The one she encountered was in possession of particularly fragile skin, in addition to the standard reduced muscle tone all Yahg scouts had _and_ catching him completely by surprise.

So when she was pitted against a duo of fully capable Yahg two months later, she got her ass handed to her. She had responded to the Yahg charge with a **Doton: Ganchūsō**, much the same as with the first one – why fix what isn't broken, right? –, and received the nasty surprise of the spikes not piercing at all, though she was sure that the Yahg felt something. Much like standing barefoot on a Lego block, it doesn't pierce but sweet spirits above does it hurt.

While the Yahg charge had not been halted, she should have been capable of reacting in time to dodge the swiping claws of the two individuals, but she had lulled herself into a state of complacency, absolutely certain the technique would work to stop them as it did the first. So when it didn't, she couldn't react fast enough and paid for it. She had allowed the two Yahg to close to ten metres and she learned then the hard way that Yahg were almost entirely muscle and far faster than their form gave them any right to be. She took two massive swipes to her chest and gut that flung her a few feet before she could defend herself, and the hits would have killed her without her new compartmented organs. Even so, ad she not been in the presence of Kokuo she still would have been likely to bleed out before she got medical attention. It was then that the Yahg made a fatal error; they assumed their prey was down and out and stalked their way to her bleeding body. Had they rushed her and started eating, there would have been very little she or Kokuo could do – though she was certain Kokuo could take both of them out before they actually started to eat –, but they gave her the time she needed to knead lightning chakra and put her hand in the Snake seal. It was possibly the most foolish thing she could do at that point, but she wanted to end the conflict on her terms – damn the consequences – and tried firing a **Raiton: Gian **with only the single handseal out of five required by the technique. Looking back it was a miracle it didn't backfire, but right then she didn't care and only wanted to reduce the two Yahg to mincemeat using the high-power flashy jutsu she had learned the week before. In that she succeeded, but the False Darkness wasn't a cheap technique to begin with and without vocalization it was even more of a chakra draining monster, so she when she woke up a week later, she was informed she damn near killed herself.

"_Congratulations, Shepard," Kokuo said dryly as she sat aside her bed. "You have managed to come close to terminating your time on this plane of existence. Again." _

_Shepard gulped. A Kokuo that wasn't serene was a _dangerous_ Kokuo, and if she wasn't far too tired to move she would be running for the hills, regardless of its futility. She learned her lesson the last time she encountered Kokuo like this. For all her newfound power, Kokuo was always happy to remind her that she and the rest of the Tailed Beasts were a _lot_ stronger still. Before Kokuo could start her rant, a shadow appeared at the entrance to her little slice of space._

"_Give her a rest, Kokuo," a voice called out, saving her from Kokuo's tirade. She craned her head in an attempt to find out who had rescued her from the eruption of Mt. Kokuo, at least for now, for her mind was hazy enough to not immediately recognize the speaker. Her neck disagreed with her intention and violently made that disagreement known. Kokuo huffed slightly and left the pair alone. The newcomer walked to her bed and she now recognized the unruly mop of blond crowning the man's head._

"_Didn't I tell you that Yahg scouts are physically the weakest of their tribe?" Naruto asked admonishingly as he stood near her bed. _

_She glared at him. _Now_ he informed her of that little titbit? "No, you didn't," she responded with venom in her tone. _

"_Oh," was all Naruto responded with, owlishly blinking a few times. Apparently, _he_ was certain he _had_ told her that. After a minute, he shrugged before helpfully saying, "Well, consider yourself warned from now on. From what I gathered, the Yahg you killed almost a year ago had particularly soft skin. It's to do with keeping their able-bodied warriors fresh for combat and finding a use for those that aren't fit for the Yahg way of fighting, even after the Yahg invented gunpowder-based firearms."_

_She scowled at him for his reticence in giving her vital information. That would have been extremely useful to know, though she supposed there was a valuable lesson in her defeat. No matter how much things look the same as what you've already accomplished or conquered, always stay guarded for hidden tricks. "How long have I been in bed?" _

"_'Bout a week, and we don't expect you to move for another three days. Blood loss and chakra exhaustion." Naruto tutted. "What the hell were you thinking firing a single-seal, _silent_ **Raiton: Gian** when you had time and opportunity for a vocalized one? Though," he added after a minute, "I don't disagree with your decision to only use a single handseal."_

_She shrugged in lieu of an answer. Naruto nodded regardless, "Ah... pride. The flaw in us all. I hardly remember the events of my mortal days excepting a few of the more character-defining moments and individuals, so very much unlike my dearest wife whose memory was pretty much eidetic even then, but I remember my pride got me nearly killed more than once back then." He nevertheless flicked an admonishing finger on her forehead. "Unlike me, you're a properly trained soldier, an elite operative from what Taigun-kun told us. The best of the best. You're not supposed to let pride get in the way." _

"_I know, sensei," she said gruffly. "I guess I was just mad at myself for being complacent, expecting the spikes to pierce and stop their advance, that I wanted to end it on my terms." _

"_I know the sentiment," Naruto said thoughtfully, reminiscing on days long gone by. "There was this guy, in about my thirteenth century after I became the Kyūbi, that actually was capable of Ascension to divinity. We had to put him down, of course, since he did not have an existing deity ready to willingly sacrifice their divinity to pass it on. That's the rules; immortality is restricted to the divine and those empowered by the divine. They can pass on their power and responsibility to individuals they choose, at the cost of their own power and immortality. Mortals cannot otherwise become immortals. Any who attempt so are to be culled. This particular shithead had found a way to _steal_ someone's divinity. He nearly succeeded when he tricked me and it almost got me killed." He looked like he ate an extremely overripe fruit, though Shepard couldn't say if he was disgusted at falling for a trick or with the concept of stealing divinity. It could be either_._ "Needless to say, when I recovered I demanded the others stay at the sideline. My pride would accept no less. Without his bag of tricks to help him, his personal power was not enough to defeat me and I _**ended** _his _pathetic_ existence." _

_Shepard goggled even as she flinched from the fury and venom lacing his voice near the end of his monologue. It was hard to believe that any of her four sensei could be hurt at all, let alone killed. How powerful were the ancient civilizations, and just how ancient were her sensei themselves? It wasn't the first time she wondered that, but there never had been a real opportunity to ask. Somehow, she suspected that not even they knew the true extent of their life if they had been sleeping on Alchera as they said._

"_Regardless," Naruto continued before she could respond, "you better take a rest. You've been progressing beyond even our wildest imaginations, and trust me that's not exactly easy to do, but you need to let your body rest. We've been bad sensei in that regard since we kept pushing and pushing, not allowing your form to rest and refresh. In our defense, it's been _literally_ millennia since we were mortal and our immortal bodies don't have the same restrictions. For the next three weeks, all we'll do is the morning workout, and an extremely light version of it at that." He hummed thoughtfully. "We'll even allow you to send a message to select people to hint that you're alive. How about that?" _

_Shepard's head snapped towards him so fast Naruto was sure it would have hurt even if she had been perfectly healthy. Her eyes were wide, and hints of wildness could be seen even as her neck protested her motion so fiercely she was sure the neck cramp she felt last week was a result of this. 'A chance to let people know I'm alive?' she thought. 'A chance to let Tali, Liara, Garrus, Wrex, Ashley, and the rest know I'm still around to kick ass and take names?' she thought. 'Hell. The fuck. Yes. Thank fuck we sort-of planned for something like this. Spectre and Council paranoia is good for something after all!' _

_Evidently, her sentiment must have been visible, for Naruto gained a bright smile and nodded. "That's settled then. When you're good to go I'll ask Taigun-kun to connect to the extranet so you can send a message, content of your choosing."_

_She sank into thought, and failed to notice him leave. She was, as a matter of fact, so embroiled in her thoughts on what could have happened to her crew over the year that she didn't notice Morpheus' grasp reaching for her and pulling her into his realm._

Two months later she was pitted against another duo of Yahg – once again able-bodied – and emerged victorious, but _far_ from unscathed. She had underestimated just how far Yahg could swivel their arms backward and got slashed, though nowhere near as severely as the first go-around. Two months after that she faced a _quartet_ of able-bodied Yahg, and once again required the attention of Kokuo to save her from dying. Yahg were simply far too tough for her to fight in more than one or two on one after less than two years of training, no matter how intense it may have been. Their physical strength was high enough that they could probably win in hand-to-hand against Krogan, and the general nature of existence on Parnack meant that all but the most drastic of weapons, ballistic or otherwise, were mostly ineffective unless one got a lucky shot or _very_ good aim. Likewise with jutsu. She didn't even try to use Earth techniques below A-rank any more, unless she'd softened the skin through kunai or blade. Fire was mildly effective, though if she managed to breathe fire into their eyes or mouth she could drop the descriptor 'mildly' and replace it with 'highly'. Lightning and Lava were the only elements she had that were capable of hurting Yahg without any preparation or special targeting.

But, to get back on track, throughout her entire time training with the four Tailed Beasts, as they called themselves, she had concluded one thing; the combination of 'Naruto' plus 'examination' was not good for her continued well-being.

"Initially," Naruto continued in the same excited tone that ripped her from her thoughts, "we had the idea that we would stir up a little trouble and have you put it down." A grimace briefly appeared on his face before he resumed his excited façade. "Unfortunately, we had to scrap that plan when we found out that the tribal Yahg are perfectly willing to forget even age-old grudges to band together to take out a threat. As much as we believe you capable of putting down a hundred Yahg in a no-holds-barred fight, we didn't want to tempt fate and have you face ten _thousand_ or more of the nasty buggers. We could step in, but that'd defeat the purpose of the exercise in the first place."

Shepard couldn't help but sigh in relief, closing her eyes in the process. Had she kept her eyes open she would have had a different reaction because her eyes would have allowed her to see Naruto's vulpine grin. "So we put together a replacement exam that is even better, in our eyes." As it was, his tone conveyed his sadistic amusement with the situation regardless.

"And what exactly does this replacement exam entail?" Shepard asked warily, dread rising in her when her eyes allowed her to see Naruto's wide grin. _I fear this isn't going to be pretty._

"Ever since we came here, Taigun has been pulling experimental weapons from the extranet and... _modifying _them with upgrades from when we were awake last."

Experimental weapons? Modifications? What, like Gauss rifles? Directed energy weapons? Multi-barrel plasma cannons? Shepard was sure she drooled a little even as somewhere deep down she doubted it. A girl could dream though, couldn't she?

"Down, Shepard," Naruto said amusedly, addressing her like one would a pet. She levelled a glare at him even as she sat down again. _When exactly did I stand up?_ "It won't be anything completely special, like energy or plasma rifles, but we figure you'll like them regardless."

Shepard's face fell before she perked up slightly. "Wait," she said, her mind latching onto something the blond had implied. "The fact you considered it means you can do it, right? Right?"

Naruto could feel the excitement rolling off her in waves and couldn't help but grin. "We can," he said neutrally, and watched as Shepard's excitement became a nearly physical force. "But we won't," he finished in the same tone. He chuckled as he saw Shepard's face fall once again in a heartbeat. Had she been a manga character back in the day he didn't doubt she would be lying on the ground, one twitching leg stuck up into the air and a sweatdrop on her face. _Do they have manga on Earth? _Naruto wondered randomly._ It'd be kinda creepy if they did, but the __full__ workings of __Time, specifically the evolution of species and cultures,__ are a mystery even to us._

"What does this, as nice as it is, have to do with the replacement exam?" Shepard asked, deciding not to question 'why'. They'd already mentioned more than once that they were keepers, custodians, not changers or fixers. She'd asked them once why they replaced her biotics with chakra, and her only answer was silence. Highly aggravating, but she wasn't capable of forcing them to answer questions they didn't want to answer.

Naruto's grin widened so much it almost literally split his face in two, and Shepard's mood sank into the floor. Grins like that _couldn't_ be very good for her continued good health.

"We dropped your guns, specifically a pistol, a shotgun, and an assault rifle, as well as your omni-tool inside the largest Yahg village in the surrounding area. Your goal is to infiltrate and get them back. You don't need to worry about the Yahg picking them apart, though, we ensured that they can't be taken apart."

Shepard sat there unblinkingly. _I'm hosed._

"Just how many Yahg are there in the village?" she asked. Less than _ten_ of them had done a number on her, and while she was confident that she could take on fifteen, maybe twenty if she could set the battlefield to her liking – in other words, engage them near a volcano so her **Yōton** jutsu would have their chakra cost cut by half or more –, she wasn't feeling very confident about numbers beyond five in any other scenario.

"Give or take a thousand," Naruto said lightly. _Spirits take me I'm dead,_ Shepard thought morosely_._ "It's not as if we were dropping you into the global Yahg capital where you'd have to fight off five hundred thousand of them."

"Right," she said, nodding, taking what relief she could find from his words. It wasn't much. "Though, a global capital of only half a million? That doesn't seem very large."

"It's not," Naruto agreed. "There are a few thousand settlements similar in size across the globe, though, with hundreds of thousands smaller settlements scattered across Parnack. Total Yahg numbers are approximately equal to a hundred times the recorded amount living on Illium – according to Taigun-kun –, or slightly over eight and a half billion." Naruto shook his head slightly. "To get back on track, you will be provided with only two pieces of information; a map of the area and the fact that Yahg brains are only five percent heavier than a standard human's while having roughly the same density." He reached into a pocket and withdrew a folded paper and threw it to her. "You set out tomorrow at first light, I'll take you to the point marked on the map with the **Hiraishin**, and from there you're on your own."

"Is the mission time-sensitive?" she asked as she caught the paper with one hand.

"It is," Naruto confirmed. "Counting from now, you have a day and a half until the seals that make your weapons unusable to the Yahg as well as unbreakable disintegrate. From your starting point, you will have exactly a quarter day, or one night, to retrieve the items before the seals break. That's approximately ten standard hours, according to our metallic friend. You have until the mission starts to come up with a plan based on available information. Good luck."

She nodded and unfolded the map, spreading it across the floor of the cave she'd been calling 'home' for the past year and nine months. The village itself featured five concentric rings of uniform thickness. The outer ring, the first one she would encounter after breaching the wall, was empty of structures and meant for training grounds – whether for the gun, the blade, or the body wasn't marked – as well as a buffer zone to give invaders no cover so the sentries could gun them down. There were four gates, one at each cardinal direction, but unless she could pull a miracle out of her ass she wouldn't attempt to enter that way. The second ring featured residential areas, where the Yahg and their families spent the night. If she required a distraction, setting off a few detonations in the second ring would be most effective, though she was loath to do so. As an Alliance Marine, then Alliance N7 Operative, then Council Spectre, her entire career was aimed at protecting the innocent – or at least the non-combatants depending on one's views on innocence – and she wasn't about to do otherwise now, regardless of species. The third could be roughly considered the commercial district. Butchers, weapon shops, blacksmiths, and the like were dotted around this ring. The fourth ring was probably the most important to the overall success of the village. It only counted a few structures, but each of these structures were highly important. The hospital, the ammunition factory, an R&D facility, a power plant, and an educational facility. _I wonder what the Yahg equivalent to a justice system is. _The fifth and innermost ring was entirely taken up by a single structure, marked only as 'chief's'. She presumed this was the tribal leader's residence.

_First question: where would my gear likely be stashed? Public and semi-public areas are out, any tribal leader would not allow any but his most trusted subjects to become more powerful than him, which any mass effect weaponry would allow even without modifications. That leaves only two options, really. The R&D facility and the chief's place so that they could be studied and replicated or handed out as the chief saw fit. _

_Second question: How do I get in? There are only two real options for entry. The two marked training grounds in the south-east. I don't doubt there are more, but they're not marked and therefore too risky. A lot depends on the wind; if it blows from the south-east the difficulty goes up. I _could _use the **Dochū Eigyo**, but I'm not good enough a sensor to say what's near the emergence point if I haven't seen the point beforehand._

_I'll need a distraction at the opposite edge of town, but the **Kage Bunshin** is too costly even if it can use jutsu, unlike the others. Perhaps a **Kaminari** **Bunshin **detonation? _

An idea hit her. _A single __**Kage Bunshin**__using__**Dochū Eigyo**__ to insert somewhere in the town, distract the Yahg with the aid of multiple __**Kaminari Bunshin**__ while I sneak in __over the wall near __either of the two training grounds and make my way to the R&D facility? Then out by __**Shunshin**__ and pray I don't have to fight while moving to the extraction point. _

_That could work,_ she decided after a few minutes of deliberation. _It needs refining though. A hell of a lot of refining. _

Hours passed while Shepard was bent over the map, furiously making notes on possible routes of entry, plans of attack and escape, and likely responses to actions based on the little she knew about Yahg psychology. She silently cursed her teacher for not providing more information. She was sure that he had much, much more than he had given her. She was capable of planning an assault with little information, it was one of the criteria of passing N6 training, but she'd not actually planned an operation like this since then. Sentinels generally weren't called for covert ops. Especially after her... upgrade, for want of a better word, to whatever human-looking race the Tailed Beasts used to be she figured that she was ideally suited for overt operations. Fire and Lava didn't lend themselves to staying silent very well at all. In addition, while she couldn't be sure because she had not subjected herself to such, she would hazard a guess she stood out like a magnesium flare in the dark on IR and UV imagery, even compared to normal humans.

When she next looked up, the day had turned into night and she finally realized just how tired she was. Yawning, she folded the map and placed it, and her notes, in a pocket of her jeans. She'd have to convince Naruto to get her some actual armour tomorrow. No way in hell was she going to do this without armour even if it was only to conveniently carry her guns.

As she succumbed to Morpheus' embrace she thought, b_y this time tomorrow I will be on my way out of here, away from this hell-hole of a planet, away from the damned ration bars that haven't started tasting better after two years and towards _real_ food, away from the sadistic training and towards trying to save the galaxy... again._

_By this time tomorrow, I will be on my way to reuniting with my crew. _

– – – –

**Translations:**

**Doton: Ganchūsō; Earth Release: Rising Rock Pillars. Canon.**

**Raiton: Gian; Lightning Release: False Darkness. Canon.**

**Dochū Eigyo; Underground Fish Projection. Canon.**

**Kage Bunshin; Shadow Clone. Canon**

**Kaminari Bunshin; Lightning Clone. Not to be mistaken for the lightning-imbued shadow clone shown in canon, this technique holds far more similarities to the water clone by being a mass of lightning chakra layered by a genjutsu to look like the user.**

**Shunshin; Body Flicker. Canon. **

– – – –

**A/N: So I wanted to include Shepard's graduation exam in this chapter as well as leave Parnack behind, but then the Shepard section of this chapter just kept becoming longer and longer, so it's relegated to the next chapter since I do not like writing 10k+ chapters.**

**I've always liked Aria as a character. The Omega DLC confirmed – to me – my interpretation of a character with rather simple base motivations (Omega is _mine_), with a lot of complexity around her. I'm not sure if I've done her justice in this chapter, but I'll wait for the reviews to make a definite judgement. **

**To cut off those that complain I'm making Asari overpowered, remember that the prideful Turians admit that Asari Commandos are the best in the galaxy, and that they're glad there's not a lot of them. **

**That said, it IS Commandos we're talking about; in this story that's slightly less than a million out of a military of just over three billion (ten percent of the population, like every other species except the militaristic Turians). You may wonder how Benezia and her squad of Commandos got taken out so easily, yes? **

**That's an answer for a later day.**

****I have exams at the end of January (20 and 30, respectively), so the next chapter may not be here until February. It's already half-written, but my ADD and PDD-NOS gets in the way. If I can get enough work on it in between studying, you should see it around 14-15 January.  
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**Merry holidays and I'll see you in the next year!  
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	5. Chapter 5

**In this chapter that did not want to be written: Shepard graduates and other things happen.**

**This chapter, which is far from my best work, concludes the first major arc: Preparation.  
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**The second major arc, Building the Team, starts next chapter.**

**The Ancients from Alchera**

The forests of Parnack were much like every other forest on every other carbon-based planet – the forests on worlds where the volus could walk suit-free were just _weird_ and patently Lovecraftian – that had forests out there, even if their flora and fauna was a bit super-sized compared to other worlds. Trees as far the eye could see, with varying levels of canopy thickness and branch count. There were numerous avian species flying around, making nests and hunting for food, small animals running around scavenging for their next meal or sustenance for their young, and all sorts of creepy crawlies doing much the same thing as every other inhabitant. Curiously, for all it's danger, Parnack did not have an arachnid class of animals.

What made this particular Parnack forest unique were three specific life-forms dashing through the dense canopy after arriving there in a literal flash of light. Two of these three were male and had that aura around them that relayed to all animals the message, 'I am the Alpha here, do _not _fuck with me', and they wisely fled before them. The third had a more general aura of danger surrounding her, but that made the wildlife no less wary. Even those animals that stood head and shoulders above even the tallest of these three foreign presences shied away from actually instigating some sort of conflict. They arrived at a small clearing and jumped to the ground.

"Alright, Shepard," one of the male forms said calmly. "It's time. You have a compass, a watch, a set of binoculars, one pouch with thirty kunai, a dozen metres of wire, and ten hours before the seals fail. The village is five kilometres straight ahead in that direction. Good luck."

"Thanks, sensei," the female said as he flashed away. She turned to the second male. "You'll be keeping a close eye, I take it?"

The male nodded, the rim of his sunglasses catching the light. "That's the decision, I'm here for supervision."

Shepard inwardly groaned. She'd not trained with Kirabi for a while now and had forgotten just how infuriating his rapping and rhyming could be. It was rushing back something fierce right about now.

"Right," was all she said in response as she crossed her middle and index fingers. "**Kage Bunshin**."

With a short burst of smoke, a perfect copy of herself appeared next to her, wearing the same form fitting black-and-red light armour and matching helmet she wore. It was a hassle convincing Naruto, and the blond had made a good point that any armour she felt comfortable wearing wouldn't stop Yahg claws anyway because they were 'seriously badass', but she managed to convince him shortly before deploying, arguing that comfort on an infiltration mission had a noticeable effect on its outcome. It was even partly true in her case.

"Alright, inventory check. I wouldn't put it past sensei to not give us everything he said he'd given us."

Her clone nodded. "Indeed."

"Kunai?"

"Thirty, check."

"Wire?"

"11 metres, give or take," her clone responded after wrapping the wire eleven times around her waist with a moderate length of wire left over. Normally that'd only guarantee 9.9 metres, but the armour added some. This, of course, assumed her measurements were still the same even after she had undergone her reconstruction by the Tailed Beasts. _Spirits, what I wouldn't give for even a rudimentary omni-tool __right now. _"Check."

"Looks like sensei isn't trying to pull a trick," Shepard said, not even bothering to hide the surprise in her voice.

"Despite being a fox, he doesn't want to risk putting you in a box," Kirabi remarked with a shrug.

She snorted. "Then what about stage three fire training?" she asked. Despite wearing a gas mask to keep the smoke away from her lungs, she _had_ nearly succumbed to her injuries due to the raw heat of the flame nearly liquefying her organs. Compartmented or not, liquefied organs were _seriously bad news._

"Lady Five was there," he said with another shrug, as if that settled the matter. In a way, it did. Kokuo was a _really, __really__ good _healer. She'd have to track down Chakwas and introduce each other once they got off this god-forsaken ball of rock.

"Fair enough, I guess."

Without further ado, the three took to the trees.

– – – –

"Shepard, this is your show," Kirabi said, far softer than she figured he was capable of, once they had reached the edge of the forest clearing housing the village. "Ready, set, go!"

Shepard nodded, and wet the tips of a her left index and middle finger. "Wind's coming..." she grabbed the compass and stuck her now-wet fingers in the air, "... from the north-west. Perfect."

She turned to her **Kage Bunshin** and nodded. "Observation, three hours," was all she said.

She received a nod in return, and her clone dashed back into the canopy to circle around the village. Shepard turned her sharpest eye towards the village proper, enhancing her sight with the binoculars.

The village was surprisingly large for its population, Shepard mused idly. A village of a thousand humans wouldn't even take up thirty percent of the area the Yahg village did. She supposed that, if one took away the outer ring the comparison would be more even, but the Yahg would always take up more space by virtue of their shortest full-grown members being head and shoulders above the tallest human of the same gender. It was built on a large hill – in area, not height – that capped out at fifty metres, ten below her current branch.

The chieftain's residence, for want of a better word, hut wasn't really appropriate but it wasn't a mansion either or even a house, stood out among the others. Quite literally, too. The chieftain's place was located on top of a hill, with the rest of the village spread out among the circles she'd familiarized herself with yesterday on the slope of said hill. _It's almost as if the Yahg village was designed to allow its defenders to attack potential invaders__ from the safety of their home__ at the cost of making themselves easier to target __by aforementioned invaders__. __I wonder what day-to-day life on Parnack __has to be__ to create such a mentality. _

The roads were very ordered; if it weren't for the circle-shape of the village she didn't doubt the Yahg would've built a village that resembled places like New York back on Earth. She could see no patrols in the village, but she doubted that they completely absent unless the Yahg did not have the concept of infiltration at all.

Somehow, she doubted that. Life generall did not evolve intelligence because it was able to smash its way through things, it did so because they needed to be smarter to survive. Even the Krogan knew subterfuge and infiltration before their fall during the Rebellions, it was part of why the Rebellions were so bloody. A minimum of seven Turian colonies fell because Krogan had wormed their way to high positions on those colonies pre-Rebellion and got their hands on access and lockdown codes.

An hour into her observation, her earlier doubt was validated; there _were _patrols in the Yahg village. They were rather smart about it, too; the patrols didn't stand out from the common Yahg in any way that she could see, only distinguished by a group of Yahg moving with more purpose and alertness than the Yahg around them. She tried to make a mental map of the routes, but it was soon apparent that it was unnecessary; the patrols she saw only ever patrolled in one direction, and their pattern was very predictable. Always counter-clockwise, always from the inner ring to the outer ring and back, and the next patrol followed fifteen minutes later like clockwork. She noticed two pair of guards outside the building marked on the map as the research and development building. It looked rather unassuming otherwise; it was three stories high, though there could be numerous underground levels, decorated in much the same way as all the other buildings in the village – that is, not at all except for the single stylized 'M' that she suspected was the mark for the village as a whole since every other Yahg wore the same mark as a tattoo on the backs of their right hand –, and absolutely nothing gave it away as a building of high importance except for the fact that it was on the second ring from the centre. She silently lamented the fact that the building she was interested in didn't have windows on her side. This, of course, assumed that Naruto-sensei hadn't purposefully messed up the designations. The words of Bee-sensei didn't do much to assuage her suspicions in that area.

Faulty or lacking intelligence was practically day-to-day business in the life of a Spectre.

Precisely at the three-hour mark according to her watch, a branch close to her rustled from the weight of her clone landing on it. Normally she'd have dispelled the clone to get the information, but that would have defeated the entire point of creating the clone that early in the mission in the first place.

"And?" she softly asked of her clone.

"Confirmed visual on our pistol," she responded at the same volume. "R&D third floor, second visible room from the North, marking on the map is accurate. I suspect the others are in non-visible rooms or in the chieftain's hut."

"Nice," the original replied.

"In addition, patrols move counter-clockwise every quarter in predictable sinusoidal patterns. Everything else seems to be in accord with the information we were given earlier."

The original nodded. She had determined most of that already, but the confirmation of a map marking and at least one weapon was very welcome news. "Right, go fish and raise hell," she ordered her clone. "Mark for my entry is a fireball into the sky."

Her clone nodded and gave a picture-perfect salute. "Understood."

Her clone jumped down to the ground and sprinted across the open field toward the village. She could barely hear the clone say "**Doton: Dochū Eigyo no Jutsu**" before she disappeared from view. A few minutes later she saw herself re-appear in the north-eastern quadrant of the village, causing the few Yahg that were out at this time of day to pause and stare as she emerged like a fish from underground. It lasted until her clone shrouded herself in the signature cloak of the **Karyūken** and punched the closest Yahg in the face. The Yahg howled – or roared, it was hard to tell with the distance she was at –, and mere seconds later a general alarm was sounded.

Even before her clone launched the fireball into the air, the original was on the move with a soft curse flowing from her lips. She needed to infiltrate the village swiftly, if the amount of time it took for the alarm to be raised was any indication. She, too, ran at the village wall but decided to scale it, rather than go under it. She couldn't see what was directly behind the wall if she went fish so she channelled chakra to her feet and climbed up the side of the wall.

Less than a minute later she found herself on the ground at the other side of the wall, having taken extreme care to be as silent and invisible as she could, silently cursing the fact that she never bothered to learn either the **Meisaigakure no jutsu **or the **Tōton no jutsu**. Fortunately, her clone seemed to have successfully drawn the attention of the sentries watching this side of the wall.

At least, there were no bullets from the snipers she'd seen in the making their way towards her. What she'd seen of Yahg firearms during her observation clearly told her that they favoured large-calibre bullets which would have ploughed through her with ease.

She sprinted towards the other end of the training field and into the cover of a Yahg house. The only precaution she took was to ensure that dust didn't billow in her wake so that the Yahg that were looking away would not find incentive to change that. She could have gone fish, but she wanted to conserve as much chakra as she could. Infiltrations like this _always _hit a snag somewhere, and she wanted to be as fresh as possible when it did.

She jumped up to the rooftop of the nearest Yahg residence and quickly took her bearings. The R&D facility was on the north western side of the village, and she currently was in the south eastern quadrant. She made her way across the rooftops as silently as possible, using the fastest **Shunshin** she felt comfortable using to cross roads whenever they popped up to avoid being seen. She thanked her lucky stars that Yahg didn't have equipment or individuals capable of sensing chakra. There were rumours of Asari Matriarchs being able to sense biotics much like Yugito once explained she and Kokuo could sense chakra, but none of the rumours were ever about a Matriarch below half a millennium, and she sincerely doubted Yahg lived that long. This, of course, presumed that biotics and chakra were similar enough to be detected the same way.

Somehow, she doubted that.

Truth be told, her journey through the village seemed a bit too easy for her tastes. Even with the threat of an intruder, it was prudent to keep patrols throughout the village going in case it was a diversion... but there wasn't as far as she had seen. Sure, she'd timed it so that she nominally had a straight shot towards the R&D facility if she was fast enough, but she didn't think that _all_ the patrols would be recalled.

She had a clear sho-

Memories rushed into her head. She swiftly dove into a nearby chimney to process the memories granted by her clone. She was not capable of doing so during fairly high-speed stealthy movement in the middle of enemy territory without slamming into things or making a very good target out of herself, and presenting a still target standing out in the open, even if on a rooftop, was not a good move. However, if she failed to process the new memories _now_ they would slip away permanently, rendering any intelligence gained on individual Yahg fighting styles, or particularly dangerous individuals in general, null and void.

_She sniggered as she watched the faces of the surrounding Yahg. It seemed they had never thought that anyone would be foolish enough to punch them in the face. _

_As the alarms were sounded from the agony-filled howl, she became a whirling dervish of flame and pain. Within twenty seconds she had knocked all ten of the Yahg near her entry point unconscious, though the last few were tougher because the sound of the alarm had knocked them out of their stupor._

_She heard stomping and spotted the original her climbing over the wall in a corner of her vision. With a pleased smile lighting up her face, she moved to intercept the new arrivals, but suddenly jumped to the side, allowing a blue blur to miss her. She followed it to its destination and spotted a Yahg appearing from the blue shroud. _

Biotic charge. Damnit sensei, biotics-capable Yahg is the kind of intel that's considered critical to mission success!

_The next few minutes were spent frantically diving, leaping, and cartwheeling out of the way as other Yahg joined the first and added their own biotics in the mix. Who knew the Yahg not only had biotics, but had developed Warp, Throw – or Pull, she wasn't sure and not intending to find out–, Charge and something that looked like that one the Justicar she encountered before she entered the military called Reave completely on their own? _

_In either case, when she got out of this she was going to kick some blond ass for not mentioning this. Suddenly the barrage lifted, and the Charging Yahg relocated to the rooftops. She looked around in confusion. She spotted two columns of Yahg forming along one road leading to where she was, and she gulped as she saw the largest Yahg yet sprinting towards her. He stood at more than three metres and if he weighed less than 400kg she would be highly surprised. He was faster than she anticipated too, but she had learned her lesson a few months ago and kept her guard up. _

_She performed a cartwheel to the right to dodge the massive Yahg barrelling in her direction and flowed into a flaming roundhouse kick as he screeched to a halt well within striking distance. "**Karyūken: Senten****ashi****!**"_

_She felt her foot connect with the massive Yahg and ruthlessly quashed her usual train of thought regarding the naming of taijutsu moves. Ninjutsu and genjutsu she could understand but taijutsu... _

_She cursed as the gargantuan Yahg grabbed her foot and tried to crush it. She could not afford to let herself be popped just yet, so she tried a **Shunshin **to get out of his grip. Somehow, she succeeded and landed at the opposite edge of the impromptu circle the other Yahg had made. _

_The giant Yahg, that she only now noticed also had an additional finger on each hand, charged at her at speeds that his hulking frame had no right moving at. She cursed internally; she had used far more chakra in the extended use of the Fire Cloak and the roundhouse kick than she had expected and was nearly out of juice. _

_Another **Shunshi****n **was not an option no matter how attractive, she would be left with so little chakra that she might as well dispel. That left her with very few open options at the moment, and with each second the chances of her doing something that did not produce the smoke from dismissal grew smaller and smaller. When the opposing Yahg had crossed half of the distance between them, she decided that she was going to go out, and she was going to do so _in style_._

_She estimated that she had enough chakra left for one shot, so she grabbed a kunai and held it in front of her with both hands like a sword. This particular jutsu was still a work in progress, but she figured that she did not need a complete jutsu to make the life of the original Shepard easier should she encounter this particular Yahg. _

_Given the fact that the other Yahg were not interfering at all despite being more than capable of such told her that this particular Yahg was a) well respected, b) the chieftain, or c) both. _

_The sound of a hundred chirping birds filled the clearing. The **Chidori **was not a particularly complex jutsu in principle. It was simply coating a weapon or fist with Lightning chakra. _

_The difficulty lay in stabilizing such enormously dense Lightning chakra. She was currently capable of a tenth of the strength of the full **Chidori**, a fact she was pretty pleased about for the two months she had been training with this jutsu. _

_At this power level the lethality of the **Chidori** was zero unless it hit a vital organ, unlike the full-strength version which was lethal anywhere you pierced the body, but there was an advantage that the full-power **Chidori** did not have; she did not need particularly good eyes to see past the concentration of Lightning chakra. _

_It allowed her to see the eyes of the watching Yahg. If they were human, she would say that fear and... anticipation? _Yes, _she thought a moment later. _Anticipation _in their eyes. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She re-focused on the Yahg dashing towards her and decided to meet it halfway. _

_She ran at her hulking opponent and saw his eyes widen. With a cry of **"Chidori"** she plunged the Lightning-charged kunai into the chest of her opponent moments before her opponent struck her and she dispelled._

Shepard frowned as she processed the last of the memories granted by her clone. The Yahg that stood head and shoulders above the other Yahg just _screamed _'Chieftain'. The silver lining was that he seemed incapable of biotics himself... or he was just so powerful her clone was not enough of a threat to make him use his biotics.

She hoped it was the former, but it would be best if she started preparing for the latter.

She hopped out of the chimney and froze. There was a Yahg _right in front of her, looking right at her. _Had she been able to, she would have seen soot on her butt. Had she not worn a helmet, she would have noticed the smoke.

She cursed loudly as the Yahg bellowed and charged. A quick **Shunshin **got her out of his path and put some distance between the two to boot. She considered herself fortunate that the Yahg appeared to be sprinters, rather than runners, and would take some time to get from where her clone was to where she was now.

She performed a cartwheel to narrowly dodge the wild slash of the Yahg with her on the rooftop. Three handseals later, she gathered a tiny bit of her chakra and called out, "**Bunshin no Jutsu**," creating hundreds of illusionary clones for the chakra of a single Great Fireball.

The standard clone require _that little _chakra.

She did not wait for the Yahg to converge on her location and sprinted off, her clones scattering to the four winds. It wouldn't take long for the Yahg to find out these were holographic projections, so she bled some extra chakra for additional uses of the **Shunshin** and managed to get inside the R&D facility without a further hitch.

"That was too easy," she said offhandedly, then stopped and palmed her face. "I just had to jinx things, did I?"

Releasing her face from her palm, she stalked forward through the R&D facility. It was, truth be told, not all that interesting. Uniform white walls in a square corridor without any sort of mural or other decoration and a door every twenty or so metres down each wing of the roughly V-shaped building. There were laboratories here that looked like the ones she saw on photos of mid-2000 chemistry labs, though she was not certain since she never studied chemistry. The first floor was filled with twenty-eight such laboratories, and only those on the northern wing had windows. Try as she might, she could not recognize anything that looked like a cafeteria, though she acknowledged that it might be because of her human preconceptions of what a cafeteria should look like.

Despite the lack of anything interesting, she kept up her vigil. The lack of _any _Yahg in the building did not feel right to her. In the vast recesses of her mind, in an area that was kept locked away whenever Shepard entered 'mission mode', a chibi version of herself started chanting.

'_Semper crecis._

_Aut decrecis._

_V__ita detestabilis.'_

She ascended the stairs at the far end of one of the two wings.

The second floor was hardly more interesting than the first. Chemistry labs were replaced by their physics cousins and several mechanical workshops. Like the chemical labs, she recognized just about nothing present inside the physics labs, never having taken much in the way of physics courses past high school. One of these workshops had a few weapons strewn about here and there. She tried to pick one up out of curiosity. _Ancestors, these things w__eigh__ a ton! _ She put the weapon, a scoped weapon she was pretty sure was meant to be a sniper rifle, down and silently continued exploring the two wings of the institute.

And she had not yet seen even a single Yahg. Shepard was getting _really _concerned with the lack of population. Surely her distraction wasn't _that _effective?

_'Ludo Mentis Aciem.'_

At the far end of the wing she was currently on Shepard appeared to strike gold when she stumbled upon an empty office. She grabbed a paper lying out in the open and nearly growled. It would have been too much to hope that the Yahg wrote in a language she could read, would it not? She threw the paper back on the pile and walked out of the office. Had she looked closer at the paper that was exposed because of her actions, she would have seen a blueprint of her pistol's exterior.

Other than the office, the second floor did not hold very much of interest. Only a few experimental weapons she would not possibly be able to wield effectively. Garrus might, though. She definitely would not, sniper rifles were not really her thing. Even if they were more suited to taking out tanks than enemy personnel.

The third floor was... lacking, for the most part. The southern wing was dedicated to offices, with something that resembled a rudimentary desktop computer in each office, but they were useless to her at the moment as the written Yahg language was alien to her, in more ways than one. The northern wing featured primarily workshop where a few devices were under construction she sort-of recognized as being solar cells and a few other doodads that would not be useful unless she was a permanent resident of the village... which she was not.

It was somewhere near the end of the northern wing that she struck gold.

There in the middle of the room, strapped to something she guessed to be a microscope, was her pistol. It gleamed in the light let in by the window, and Shepard could see that its usual blue-white Alliance paint job had been replaced by a dull grey with the black markings that signified a seal written on the gun. She hovered around the weapon, checking if any traps had been set up for people that removed the weapon without authorization. She found none.

She gently removed her weapon from where it was clamped, and cradled the weapon gently in her hands before clamping it to the mag-lock on her armour. There was the familiar thud of a weapon being locked into place at her hip, and the very minor shockwave pleasantly spread throughout her entire body.

She sighed. She had missed this. The familiar weight of a weapon at one's side, even if she could not fire it due to a lack of thermal clips, was her ever-present companion after Mindoir. She went _everywhere _with at least one weapon attached to her, and even the Council had allowed her the right to concealed carry within Council chambers even before she became a Spectre due to psychological issues. Granted, she had to relinquish all heat sinks beforehand, but still. She had felt naked and vulnerable the past two years even as she was learning how to wield the elements themselves, but now...

Now she was, once again, _whole_.

Shaking herself from her blissful stupor, Shepard sneaked out of the room. There were still two more room to visit, though she did not think that her guns were present in either.

To her great surprise, the first of the two doors was locked, the first door out of forty plus to be so. Scowling, she enveloped her hand in chakra and punched the lock. The lock broke and the door flew from its hinges, it being a door that opened to the outside, rather than inside.

Nothing. Not the figurative nothing that still left empty workbenches, desks, fume hoods, or similar, but completely nothing. It was a square room about four metres in all directions, and it was absolutely barren, though Shepard could see places where she figured something was attached once.

_What the hell? Why would a room in R&D be empty? _

She placed the door back where it was, taking care to make it appear as if it had not been unlocked. It was unlikely she would ever be back after this, but it never hurt to be thorough.

The second of the two remaining doors led to another completely barren room.

She frowned. What the hell was going on here?

She shook her head to stop her brain from conjuring up theories. The most important thing was that of her three weapons, only her pistol was in the R&D facility. Given the tribal nature of the Yahg and their warrior culture, Shepard did not think that the chief would willingly part with such advanced weaponry as her own unless it was with the R&D facility. She sincerely doubted that the weapons would be kept in one of the residences on the fourth ring, which left the second ring and the chief's own residence.

She returned to the room that held her pistol and smashed the window, using the newly created opening to climb outside. Truth be told, walking on walls never got old. It was like sticking a big middle finger up in the face of gravity, and was only eclipsed by using chakra to walk on water.

She could hardly wait until she 'accidentally' walked on water in front of a Christian. It would be hilarious.

She stepped off the wall onto the roof and looked down at the streets. There were dozens of Yahg actively scouring the village, no doubt looking for her. A large group headed straight for the R&D institute, no doubt to ensure that nothing was stolen. Shepard scoffed, they should have placed guards if they were so anxious nothing was stolen.

She locked onto the chieftain's hut, far and away the most likely place where the rest of her equipment was stored. If her guess was off she was in a whole buttload of trouble. She sat down at the edge and waited patiently for the rush of Yahg entering R&D to die down, at which point she could walk down the wall and leisurely ascend the hill upon which the chieftain's hut stood.

Or she could jump down and go fish.

Decisions.

She decided to conserve her chakra as much as possible, she _had _jinxed it not too long ago, and as soon as the last Yahg entered the building, she channelled chakra to her feet and stepped onto the wall that would take her to the ground.

Ten minutes later, Shepard opened the door to the residence of the Yahg chieftain and halted. _Something doesn't feel right here... _

In hindsight, she had been having far too little trouble with the entire infiltration up to this point. She frowned and refocused on her goal and entered what appeared to be a living room, if the furniture was any indication. If she was correct, her weapons should be right... there.

She spotted the rest of her weapons, and the black band that was the hardware portion of her omni-tool, affixed to the wall like a hunting trophy. Shepard reached to grab her wayward weaponry, and did not bother looking around to ensure she would not be ambushed. Nor did she check for possible traps.

Not that it mattered just yet.

A shadow fell over her and she froze, her hand quite literally centimetres away from her equipment. She remembered her words at the R&D facility and once again cursed herself for jinxing the mission.

There, in the doorway, stood the one Yahg she didn't want to meet. At more than three metres tall, the local Yahg chieftain cut an imposing figure. She gulped, seeing him from afar as he made his way towards clone-created chaos was one thing. It was another thing entirely to see the behemoth up close. She estimated that the claws on each of his twelve fingers – six on each hand, unlike the usual Yahg five per hand – were easily twenty centimetres long. She didn't doubt that her light armour would stand very, _very_ little chance against a direct hit from those. Not that it did against normal Yahg claws, but whereas her armour would be like a thin strip of leather to normal Yahg, she figured that it would be like paper before this one.

The chieftain's eight eyes observed her with supreme disdain, as if she was but a bug to squash, before a hint of anger seeped into those eight dread eyes. Evidently he didn't like that she a) invaded his village, b) caused such devastation to it, c) broke into his personal residence, and d) attempted to take his trophies.

In light of that, the chieftain's calm was rather admirable. Nevertheless, Shepard could see the light of rage growing in the chieftain's eyes. The tension in the air grew thicker and thicker until finally, with a challenging roar, the chieftain snapped and bellowed out his displeasure at her activities.

Deep within Shepard's psyche, something rose up in response to the chieftain's roar.

It was a very primal part, the part of herself that was a remnant of days long passed, days when _Homo Sapiens_ were still a cave-dweller, when they had not yet developed language beyond grunts and pheromones. When an individual's entire existence could be summed up by the words 'fight, hunt, feed, and fornicate'. When her ancestors still looked at the sky and thought it the realm of the gods, if they had developed a concept of divinity in the first place.

When challenges for control of a clan or tribe were essentially day-to-day business. Buried beneath thousands upon thousands of years and hundreds upon hundreds of generations of sophistication, Primal Shepard surged in strength at hearing the chieftain's roar, and responded in kind before subsiding.

The chieftain froze, before lowering his arms and motioning for her to follow. The chieftain's bodyguards stood to the side, their weapons lifted in the traditional 'present arms' as they formed a path between them.

Heaving the sigh of those cursed with the luck of the damned, Shepard followed.

– – – –

The hill was hollow. The fifty-metre high hill was _hollow_.

And it was filled with an arena. An honest-to-the-Ancestors _arena!_

An official-looking Yahg snapped his fingers and the roaring crowd, growing in size and volume by the minute, fell silent, somehow having heard the sound over their noise. He made a few gestures that Shepard guess was a command for her to follow him, and when the Yahg started to walk away she was proven correct. She was led down a stairway into an antechamber, where she was offered a choice of weapons, but neither the axe, sword, or mace suited her. She reached into her pouch and withdrew all her kunai and showed them to the official. He grabbed one and ran his finger along the blade's edge. He snorted, but when he pulled his digit away he noticed a faint stream of blood running down his skin he gave an approving nod.

The official started talking to her in the guttural language of the Yahg that would not sound out of place in a Lovecraftian setting, but he could see that she did not understand a word of what he said. A yellow flash surrounded her wrist, leaving a wristband behind. She could make out the markings of a seal on the thick wristband and with a bit of chakra enhancement she could see the centering kanji.

知

得

She frowned a little. What was the translation for these again? A few seconds later her brain had gathered the right bit of knowledge. _Satoku_: Knowledge; Comprehension. Obviously, a translation bracelet. Idly her brain wondered why kikitori was not used, which specifically meant listening comprehension if her memory served her right, before she shrugged. It wasn't important.

It was only after that realization that she realized that she could now obviously, and clearly, hear the official.

"What was that?" he said. To her surprise, the bracelet gave him a suburban American accent, though she could clearly hear the guttural origins of the words. She sincerely doubted that anything in the memories of her sensei talked with an American accent so did that mean the bracelet used her own memories somehow?

She shrugged. "My teacher can telepo- relocate things instantly, no matter if there are obstacles in the way," she answered, unsure if the Yahg had a word for the concept of teleportation. "This appears to be a translation bracelet. So that we can understand each other," she added upon seeing his confused look. Either all Yahg spoke the same language or translation was not the word they used to express the concept of understanding other languages. She frowned minutely. _Wouldn't the word 'translation' translate into whatever word the Yahg use for the same thing? _She threw the thought away, she had other, more important, things to worry about right now.

The Yahg nodded in understanding. "You have a powerful master then, challenger," he mused. "Now that you can understand me, I will go over the conditions and limitations of the fight ahead once more. It is, of course, a fight to the death."

"Of course," she replied.

"There are few," the official continued as if she had remained silent. "The first is the arena. Should you touch ground outside the square, you automatically lose and your life is ours. Touching the ceiling, however, is acceptable as long as your touch is limited to the area directly above the square." Shepard nodded, such a rule was not uncommon when this practice was still performed back on Earth, though she suspected that a challenger once used a Biotic Charge to get to the ceiling outside the indicated area, probably to get at a weapon of some sort. The lack of support beams above the ring with obvious evidence they had once been there supported that conclusion. She slapped her cheeks, her thoughts were wandering again.

"The second is that any poisons that do not immediately kill are banned. This is to prevent a situation where the settlement is without a head after the fight.

"The third is a rather more barbaric practice in my opinion, but it has its roots in tradition and tradition must be observed," he said, and Shepard was sure that either his opinion was rare among Yahg or it was a sentiment not shared by the current chief, assuming that what was seen in his eyes was resentment.

"What tradition is that?" she asked curiously.

The official made a sound she guessed was the Yahg equivalent of a sigh. "The victor has to rip out the loser's heart and eat it in front of everyone."

Shepard nearly turned green and took a few deep breaths to calm herself. She could not afford the distraction of feeling queasy right before such a fight.

"You will not be able to leave the heart uneaten if you wish to get away without repercussions. The traditionalist faction is larger than it was in times gone by." He blinked with all eight eyes at once repeatedly for a few seconds. "You will exit this room via the portal you didn't use to enter once the horn blares. Fight well, challenger," the official said in parting.

Shepard sat down and entered a light meditative trance to calm herself before the fight.

What felt like a scant ten minutes later, the horn blared and Shepard stood up. Steeling her mind, she exited the room and into the arena. The bright lights used to illuminate the stage blinded her briefly when they focused on her as she appeared from the room.

"And here is our challenger!" a voice roared into a megaphone, barely making itself heard over the din of the spectators. "From an unknown race and unknown origins, weighing in at four _ch'jaflga_, and with the ability to call upon lightning and fire!

"What is your name, challenger?"

"I am Shepard!" she yelled as loud as she could, hoping that the announcer heard her. Apparently they did, because he swiftly continued.

"Give a warrior's welcome toooo... SHEPARD!"

The crowd roared. Apparently her clone had put up an agreeable performance earlier for them to react this way.

The other door opened, and the chieftain stepped out wearing armour that looked ceremonial as much as it looked functional. Before the chieftain stepped onto the stage, which Shepard realized looked like something out of an old anime Kasumi once tried to get her interested in – something with dragon in its name, it didn't work due to lack of weaponry. Kasumi had decidedly more success with Gundam –, he reached up to touch three points on his armour in rapid succession, and the ceremonial decorations fell off.

"And here is our beloved chieftain!" the announcer yelled. "Clocking in at sixteen _ch'jaflga_, he has led us to our great position over the last fourteen years. ALL HAIL KRO'FLTAL!"

"ALL HAIL!" the audience shouted at once as one, and Shepard began to suspect that despite the words of his subjects, this chieftain wasn't all that favoured in the village. She focused on the chieftain, who had taken his place on the other side of the ring.

The crowd fell silent as Shepard and the chieftain stared at each other. Metaphorical sparks lanced between their eyes as their bodies tensed, their breathing smoothed out, and pre-combat stances were assumed.

"FIGHT!"

Neither moved. The air had grown stale from the tension between the pair currently inside the fighting area. Shepard allowed her eyes to roam over her opponent's frame, searching for weaknesses.

"_Everyone has their weakness, Cadet Shepard. Hostiles favouring one leg are likely to be weak with the other, guarding one side usually means the other is weak. Their body betrays themselves to those who know _how _and _where _to look."_

There! His weight was shifted slightly to his right, and his right arm was raised beyond what she would consider healthy for Yahg, though she was far from an expert. Deciding to discard the arm for now until she had more conclusive proof, Shepard had her first target; the left leg.

A large cloud of dust billowing up behind her, Shepard exploded forward.

– – – – _The Day Before, Omega – – – –_

"Ancestors take you, you _bosh'tet _machine! Cooperate, damn you!" the young woman wearing a matte gray envirosuit shouted at the gadget she'd assembled.

"Are you alright, Tali?" one of her coworkers, wearing a burgundy envirosuit, asked hesitantly. Ever since she'd received that strange message a few months ago, Tali had been... strange. Stranger than usual, at any rate. She constantly muttered to herself about everything and nothing, and sometimes she'd softly – almost reverently – utter 'the Ancestors deemed to take you before your time, but you struggled free from their grasp. _Keelah se'lai, Kaihar.' _The first time they heard that they'd almost put her in touch with a Quarian psychotherapist, because Tali's Captain on her Pilgrimage, Spectre Shepard, was _dead,_ it said so on every reliable and unreliable news station out there!

On the other hand, the fact that all of them were in agreement was odd, _very_ odd. If Tali had not been that distraught over the news they'd think it was some kind of cover-up situation. Regardless of her Captain's status, this new Tali put them all on edge for a reason they couldn't articulate.

"I am fine, Narran," she replied in the same airy tone that was her new neutral tone since she received that message. "However," she continued, re-addressing the gadget on the bench before her in a venomous tone that screamed '_I will hurt you if you don't do as I say'. "_I cannot say the same for this _bosh'tet_ piece of _scrap_ if it doesn't turn on within ten seconds," she finished with a glare that went mostly unseen behind her violet-polarized faceplate, but that could almost be felt by the poor souls in Tali's vicinity.

_Note to self: flush waste container ASAP_, Narran thought. Evidently, the device thought among similar lines as it slowly started to emit a soft whirring. Within moments, the whirring was joined by a soft hum as the ventilator was booted. Within moments, the anti-grav field activated and a hard-light construct appeared before her, taking the shape of a standard drone.

"Unit 2249, designation Chiktikka vas Paus online. Awaiting commands."

"_Muahahahahaha!"_ Narran jumped in fright from the sound of Tali's evil-sounding laughter. _"IT LIVES!"_ She coughed. "Sorry, but I always wanted to do that," she said, scratching the back of her helmet sheepishly.

"Ancestors, Tali!" Narran gasped, his hands pressed over his heart. "You nearly gave me cardiac arrest!"

"Good!" Tali said brightly. "That means I did it right!"

Narran'Sharal vas Neema simply shook his head, trying to calm his pounding heart. The loss of a close one, especially if that one is a Captain, always was devastating to any Quarian, but Tali took it especially hard. She didn't eat voluntarily for two weeks following the news of the Normandy's destruction and she threw herself into her engineering duties with a fervour seen rarely among Quarians. Eventually, in an effort to distract her from her Captain's death, they introduced her to vids from Earth, the homeworld of her Captain. That was a mistake.

Within a few days, the majority of the Neema could be heard quoting lines from Earth vids, and the vids from Earth soon spread around the entire Flotilla like wildfire, to use the human expression. It was very unsettling to hear otherwise well-adjusted individuals like Sergeant Kal'Reegar yell 'say hello to my little friend' just before he activated his shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, even if it was for target practice. Thankfully, the frequency of quoting vids had been drastically reduced approximately a year ago, but that did not mean that it went away. Far from it.

"Alright, Chiktikka," Tali said. "Test one: electrical lance. Target: Alpha-2. Activate."

"Acknowledged." The drone approached target Alpha-2, a suspiciously Geth-like stationary dummy, and a lance of electricity shot out from the drone when it had closed to two metres, the maximum range of drone-mounted electrical weaponry.

"Acceptable," Tali muttered while tapping her omni-tool to properly assess the damage done. "But far from optimal, might have to revert to version eleven." She sighed. "Test two: rocket launcher. Target: Alpha-3. Activate."

"Command confirmed," Chatika replied in a monotone. Target Alpha-3 was another suspiciously Geth-like target, though unlike Alpha-2 it was a mobile one. Following a short start-up period that was well within acceptable parameters, the rocket sped away from the confines of the drone. Tali had debated with herself to put a proc with the rocket launching sequence that spouted bad-ass one-liners, but decided against it.

She ran a few quick diagnostics on her new combat drone, and nodded to herself.

"Everything is within operational parameters. Kaihar is going to be pleased. Narran, inform Admiral Gerrel that the Combat Drone v12.0 is alive and functional, but that further testing is required to optimize ordinance and ensure long-term stability in and out of live-combat situations," Tali ordered. Narran shook his head at her reference to her erstwhile Captain, but kept his mouth.

"Understood, Tali," Narran replied, and he hastened to the sole comm terminal that was to be used to establish a connection to Flotilla Command. Not through technological limitations – Narran inwardly scoffed at the term 'technological limitations' applied to _anything _Quarian –, but by order of the Admiralty in accord with Aria T'Loak, their employer for the past two years, though the currently active crew had arrived only six months ago to replace the first. In total, Aria employed nearly two thousand Quarians, along with a handful of Salarian, Asari and Turian researchers in these labs. He decided to get the most of this communication and turned a right instead of left, taking him to the other labs where fleet-siblings were busy studying Reaper Tech from a safe distance using remotely controlled actuators and high-def cameras. A Quarian entered the hallway from a corridor on his left and his eyes lit up in recognition.

Faceplate polarized a deep red – his favourite colour –, enviro-suit painted a dull burnt orange, and two veils, each with a unique pattern, adorning said suit. Even if one of the two veils was not decorated with his own clan pattern he would still have recognized her by the subtle differences in body language and mannerisms that allowed Quarians to tell one another apart.

"Narran," Sheila'Herral vas Neema greeted him warmly.

"Sheila," he replied in much the same tone with an accompanying tone of greeting. Sheila moved to walk next to him, their hands occasionally brushing against each other.

"What brings you here, away from Tali's domain?" she asked, saying the second half of the sentence in a slight dramatic

"She sent me to dump preliminary data on the new version of the combat drone," he said. "She got the rocket to work and it's quite the walloper." He blinked and groaned, placing a hand to his faceplate. "It packs quite the punch," he corrected lamely.

Sheila giggled from his antics. Her eyes lit up even more than they already were due to Quarian biology combined with their faceplates when she processed his words, not just the way in which they were said.

She gave a squeal that did not mesh with her being a grown Quarian and wrapped her arms around Narran, her faceplate very close to his. "Truly?" she asked like a child presented with an exciting new toy.

"Yes. Talk to Tali if you want to learn more, I doubt she'll mind the company," he replied. At a lower volume and in a somewhat hopeful tone he continued, "I know I wouldn't."

She placed a hand at the side of his helmet, having heard his soft addendum. "You know I don't make the assignment rosters, but I'll try and appeal to Harinn." She sighed softly. "We've seen far too little of each other the past half year," she said in a wistful tone.

"We can always talk about reserving a clean room directly to Aria, you know."

"I know," she said softly. He knew her, though. She wouldn't unless he practically forced her to for fear of being perceived selfish. He liked that in her and simultaneously despaired about that quality of her. There was nothing wrong with being a little selfish once in a while, even the much more social than average Quarians recognized that.

They slowly separated as they approached the lab where Sheila spent most of her days. They nodded to the guard outside the lab, something'something vas Idenna, Narran wasn't too sure, and walked inside.

"Sheila, come take a look at this," one of the researchers said from his workstation the moment they had entered.

"Once more unto the breach," she sighs. "Talk to you later, laerin." With a minor wiggle of a delectable posterior she walked forward to resume her duties.

Narran nods. "Until we next meet, laera," he called after her, eyes fixed on the wiggling piece of Quarian anatomy. He was reminded of that Human and Turian in Afterlife discussing sexual attraction between species, a conversation that was more fit for Citadel ambience. After a long discourse on the Human attraction to mammary glands – a sentiment shared by Quarians and Asari – and Turian attraction to the midriff for reasons he didn't recall anymore, they looked each other in the eye for a few minutes in total silence before raising their drinks in tandem. 'Hips and gluteal muscles?' the Human had asked. 'Hips and gluteal muscles,' the Turian had confirmed and they clinked glasses.

He remembered agreeing internally, though mammary glands had their own attractiveness. He shook his head to clear it from the random thoughts and looked for the lab supervisor. They had agreed with Aria that not all data could be sent on towards the Flotilla, but quite a bit could. One of Aria's men, a stranded Quarian named Kenn, had strict guidelines on what could be passed on and what could not.

He had initially questioned the wisdom of getting a Quarian to supervise other Quarians in order to _not _send on specific data to the Fleet, but recanted that when he saw what Aria had done for Kenn. She had saved his life on no less than three occasions, though how many of them were engineered and how many were not he did not want to guess, and stopped several other shops from hiking up the prices because Kenn was a Quarian, as was custom on many other planets, creating a powerful honour-debt that no one on the Fleet would mess with and that Kenn would honour if he wanted to keep calling himself a Quarian.

"Kenn," he greeted the Quarian who had been given the title of 'Overseer'.

"Narran," Kenn replied. "Here for another data-dump?"

He nodded. "Yeah, Tali got that new combat drone working and wants to send the preliminary data to the Admirals. No way was I going to say no to Tali."

Kenn laughed nervously and didn't succeed in suppressing a shiver. "I can empathize," he said. "She's scary when she's angry." He handed the other Quarian an OSD. "Here, almost everything passed the guidelines this time."

Narran grabbed the OSD and put it in a storage pouch. "Thanks, the Admirals will be pleased."

"Yes, they will," Kenn quietly assured him as he walked away.

– – – –

"... and that's all for now, Admirals. I've not looked at the data from the other team. Are there any messages you want me to pass on?" Narran finished his report with the customary bow.

"Yes, there is, actually," Admiral Koris remarked, bringing up a holographic projection of a Quarian in a blood-red suit. "This is Veetor'Nara, a Pilgrim working on the human colony Freedom's Progress. He hasn't responded to our hails after we received the news that Freedom's Progress was the next human colony to go dark. We want you to take a small group of ten and see what's what. We'd send an official squad of Marines but they're two weeks out."

Narran nodded silently. Such an assignment was easily doable, and their agreement with Aria had room for such trips. "Any particular individuals I should include in the squad?"

Admiral Koris gave his own nod. "Yes. The only fixed member of the squad is Tali'Zorah, who has a bit of history with Veetor. She is to be the squad leader."

Narran nodded again. "I'll get a group together. We'll depart tomorrow or the day after."

"Understood, Narran'Sharal," Admiral Koris replied. "Ancestors keep you. Keelah se'lai."

"Keelah se'lai, Admirals."

– – – – _The Next Day, Parnack – – – –_

Shepard greeted the open air with a sigh of relief. Her muscles ached, her blood was flowing down the outside of her skin to pool at her feet, and she was liable to just fall down from tiredness or blood loss any moment now.

She started a slow shamble up the hill to the residence of the chieftain. _Her _residence now, come to think of it. She would have to think of a way to keep someone aligned to her in charge, or ask sensei if there was any possibility for a permanent clone to stay behind. She may not have wanted to be a Yahg chieftain, but it was an asset she was not going to keen on giving up.

A yellow flash lit up the hillside behind her, and many of the Yahg that were watching her progress started to point and chat in their language. She was too tired to make out the words, but the tone of their voices was unmistakable, and apparently carried over between species.

Awe.

Had she not seen her blond sensei abuse the technique so often during the past two years, she'd be the same. True teleportation was very impressive, and no technology currently existed in Council space that could emulate it. She felt safe betting that Valern would be willing to mate with her sensei if he shared its secrets with the Council, as disturbing as the image was.

When the flash had subsided she could see all four of her sensei and Taigun gathered before her.

"Congratulations are in order, Chieftain Shepard," Naruto said as a way of greeting while Kokuo walked up to her with a bright green glow shrouding her hands.

"Thanks, sensei," she replied tiredly as the Five-Tails pumped healing chakra into her to close her wounds. Vaguely, she heard an astonished yell, "_that's _the new chief's master?" Apparently the translation bracelet was a universal one.

Ancestors bless Fūinjutsu.

"You fought well, Shepard," Yugito praised, and Shepard preened a little. Praise from Yugito was _rare, _unlike her husband.

"Naruto-kun flashed us to the ceiling support when Bee-koi reported that you were entering mortal combat with the chieftain, Shepard," Kokuo explained serenely. "I did not think it was possible for one to progress as much as you have in two years' worth of training, even if your teachers are the five of us."

"Thanks," she said before furrowing her brows a little. "Say, is it possible for a permanent, durable clone to exist here?" she asked, and four eyebrows rose to meet hairlines. She could have sword Taigun's eyeflaps twitched in an approximation of the same movement. "It's just, I am the chieftain now and therefore responsible for this village. In addition, having Yahg allies is not something I can just pass up, you know?"

The four nodded in understanding. "Cordial relations would be beneficial," Taigun chimed in. "We project an approximate thirty-three to eighty-seven percent chance that an established alliance with the Yahg is of positive influence in the approaching Reaper War. Variance in the estimate is induced by the unknown starting date of the Reaper War and unknown Yahg susceptibility to Indoctrination."

Shepard nodded. "Which is why I want a permanent clone here. A thousand something Yahg may be a drop in the galactic bucket numbers-wise, but even the scouts are on par with most Krogan less than two centuries old, and I can try and form alliances with other villages."

Naruto nodded. "I agree." After a moment of thinking, he turned to Yugito. "Chishio?" he asked.

"Could work, but they don't have native personalities," Yugito mused. "Combine blood with shadow through seals?"

Naruto charged a finger with chakra and started drawing a seal in mid-air. "We'd need a linker to stabilize the lateral transference, and some sort of focus connecting form and energy, but that does seem the most likely path to success. How do we ensure that clone and original remain synched? I don't think inducing a Path-like experience would be all that conducive to principal performance in the first half year, not to mention the unknown transmission speed and reliability of the Path seals over interplanetary distances, let alone intersystem ones."

"True," Yugito conceded with a thoughtful frown. When her eyes fell on Taigun her eyes lit up with an idea. "Entangled connection to a tertiary repository with REM-induced synch?" she posited excitedly.

"While the detectives among us," Kokuo said to Shepard over the excited clamor of the two blonds, "busy themselves with solving the latest mystery to appear before them, what say you to claiming your weapons, Shepard?" Kokuo offered. "Out of all of us, I was the most adept at actual engineering, not just research, and was most involved in modifying your weapons. Not that it was all that hard, the society that used to live on what you call Alchera was much more technologically advanced then yours."

"Just how advanced are we talking about, exactly?" Shepard wondered while restarting her interrupted climb, Kokuo, Kirabi, and Taigun trailing behind her.

"We were on the cusp of direct spatial-temporal manipulation through machinery. All that was required before we could do so was solving the various paradoxes involved with temporal translation."

Shepard felt her jaw drop. _Temporal translation? That sounds an awful lot like... _"Time travel?!" she exclaimed incredulously.

"We preferred, and I still do, the term temporal translation due to its reduced ambiguity," Kokuo replied. "But yes. In a nutshell, time travel."

"Ancestors," she breathed out. _Tech to travel through time, theoretically. __Ancestors before me. _"So what exactly was done to my equipment?" she asked curiously. If they were on the cusp of using to travel _through time _then weapon mods should be easy and spectacular, right?

"Like Naruto-kun said before, our modifications are not overt things. We can explain your chakra as a mutation in your element zero nodules – in fact, an isotope of element zero is at the heart of chakra –, but directed energy weapons would lead to more questions that we felt comfortable with."

"Wait, an isotope of eezo is what caused chakra?" Shepard asked incredulously.

"Indeed, though the process is more indirect than your statement implies," Kokuo confirmed with a nod. "The vast majority of eezo consists of twenty two neutrons in the nucleus, slightly positively charged because of interactions similar to what you call London dispersion forces that perform a sub-quantum process unique to a mass of pure neutrons with an electron shroud. One such effect is that the laws of physics are altered. In particular, the mass-energy relation is altered to a point that FTL travel is possible if the eezo is negatively ionized beyond its initial, half-positive charge.

"Chakra, on the other hand, started as a byproduct of the extremely rare twenty-_eight _neutron isotope of eezo. We were fortunate that a high concentration of the twenty-eight neutron isotope existed in significant enough quantities that all life was affected. All life was in possession of bioelectrical processes to produce chakra. What we are not aware of, however, is why all life, even at locations at significant distances from the nearest source of eezo-28 has chakra. Our early hypotheses involve dark energy."

Shepard nodded numbly. _Multiple isotopes of eezo. Ancestors, Adams and Tali are going to flip. _

"Can this twenty-eight isotopes be synthesized?" Shepard asked curiously. Eezo-22 was beyond the limits of current tech to fabricate, but perhaps Eezo-28?

"It can," Kokuo confirmed. "However, we required tech that took the four of us fifteen millennia to create, and we knew where to look and what to look for thanks to our near-divine status."

Shepard allowed her face to fall as she finally stepped inside her new living room. She took a moment to look around and take in the entire room, something she did not do before because she was more focused on her weapons. It was a curious mixture of modern and tribal styles. The furniture itself, its dimensions aside, would not stand out of place in offices of high-profile megacorps on Illium. Nor would it truly be out of style among the remnants of the Native Americans that adhered to the old ways, before the white man ever set foot on American soil.

In many ways, the Yahg were far more human than she expected given the environment on Parnack, though no one species fit the bill for a true one-to-one comparison. There were elements from the Krogan biology and culture, Turian culture, and Terran psychology, especially in body language.

It was very odd, as if someone took what they considered to be the best of each of those species and tried to engineer an entirely new race from it, but it had deviated from the blueprint somewhere along the river of time.

Shepard shook her head to clear it from her rapidly diverging train of thought. She eyed her weapons affixed to the wall, displayed like a human would hunting trophies. "So, to get back to my earlier question, what was actually _done _to my weapons?"

"For all weapons, heat generation has been curtailed by approximately 75% without losing penetrative power.

"For all practical intents and purposes, your pistol is now a sniper rifle without scope, not that you need one when you enhance your eyes with chakra. We were able to shoot the wings from a butterfly at more than four of your kilometres. Your shotgun has an in-built Carnage module that does not reduce the lifespan of the shotgun itself, as well as increased penetrative power and raw kinetic force of the projectiles. It is everything a Krogan-designed shotgun aims to be. As a result, I do not recommend getting caught with it, a cursory inspection of Council weapon design codes as provided by Taigun a year ago showed it broke no less than thirteen.

"Your assault rifle has been modified to allow two concurrent ammo modifications, in addition to increasing the kinetic force of each impact by approximately 33%."

"Two concurrent ammo mods? Do freezing and incendiary cancel each other out?" she asked. _Warp and phasing ammo..._ somewhere deep within her psyche, a chibi-Shepard drooled.

"We did not test such a combination, but theoretically they should cancel, yes. Two incendiary mods will not double the effect, though."

"I see," Shepard said as she reached for the two weapons and her omnitool attached to the wall. "and my omnitool?" she asked as she clipped the item in question in place.

Kokuo grinned and Shepard took an instinctive step back. _A grinning Kokuo is _not _a good sign. _

"We increased the processing power and memory capability, as well as implement a hud-style system that can cooperate with the suit of armour we have been designing with Taigun for the past year. You'll like it, Shepard."

She nodded and started the omni-tool, taking a few moments to re-acquaint herself with its basic functions after going two years without.

"Ancestors, this thing is fast," she said. She shut off the 'tool and yawned a very long and loud yawn.

It appeared that her earlier adrenaline was finally wearing off.

"That it is. We'll talk more tomorrow. I imagine that Naruto and Yugito have solved their puzzle by then."

Shepard nodded, and took a few steps to the closest couch. Before she reached it, her legs finally gave way and she crumpled. Before she could hit the floor, tightly snuggled into Morpheus' embrace, Kokuo caught her and took her to the chieftain's bed.

– – _The Next Day, Parnack – – – –_

"So," Shepard asked of her sensei and Taigun after a well-deserved rest, inwardly thanking Naruto for giving her such high regeneration while resting. "Any progress on that clone?"

"Yes," Naruto replied without hesitation. "We will require a bit of your blood, a **Kage Bunshin** and for you to fuel a sealing ritual that we've already prepared outside with enough chakra to power **Ryūsei Kazan **for five minutes. It's nothing truly special on your part except for the quantity of chakra it requires," Naruto finished with a shrug.

Shepard sighed and crashed into a chair. "Do whatever is necessary so I can get off this rock and into a proper bath somewhere on Illium or the Citadel."

"We're afraid your proper bath will have to wait, Shepard," Yugito said, her voice trying to comfort her student as much as possible.

"Why not?" she groused. "Is it too much to ask for a single proper bath?"

"The Collective has noticed a pattern that has extremely negative implications emerging over the past seven standard months and three days, Shepard-Spectre," Taigun said in his standard monotone.

Shepard slumped in her chair. So much for that bath. "Enlighten me."

"Human colonies have stopped responding to communications," Taigun explained. "Investigations by the megacorporations that sponsored these colonial programs have shown that all colonists have vanished."

"Seemingly instantaneously, humans have just up and left," Yugito continued where Taigun left off. "Food is left uneaten on the table with utensils close by, computers are left turned on, and transportation just dropped from the sky, as if the pilots vanished suddenly. Close to fifteen colonies have gone dark already, the latest of which is Freedom's Progress."

"You have expressed a desire to be re-introduced in person to your old crew, Shepard-Spectre," Taigun went of on an apparent non sequitur. Shepard nodded regardless, she'd not interacted much with Taigun over the past two years, he was a Geth and she wasn't going to trust him until he was vetted by her favourite Quarian, but the little she knew of him was that he _never_ went on non sequiturs.

"Coincidentally, a team of Creators has been dispatched to the colony of Freedom's Progress to retrieve a wayward Pilgrim. Leading this team is Creator Tali'Zorah vas Neema."

Shepard's eyes widened. Her little Tali was _leading _a team to get a Pilgrim back to the Flotilla?

A well of almost-motherly pride surged up within her. Damnit she was good. "That settles it, we're going to Freedom's Progress ASAP."

"Understood, Shepard," Yugito said readily. Shepard tilted her head in confusion.

"You run the show now, Shepard," Naurto explained. "We'll stick with you, at least for a while, but this is your galaxy, your generation, and unless things start to become _really_ messed up we'll just sit on the sidelines, offer advice, infuriate politicians, and generally be a peanut gallery."

Shepard nodded, standing up from her chair. "So what about the rest of my crew?" she asked.

"Vakarian-Lieutenant has disappeared from the galactic communications network," Taigun replied. "We project that there is a 67% chance he is the Omega vigilante Archangel, 45% chance he has assumed the identity of the Niacal vigilante Hunter, and a 78% chance he is operating under the name Undertaker on the joint Asari-Human colony Tortuga.

"Urdnot-Warlord has assumed near-complete control over the Krogan clans of Tuchanka.

"T'Soni-Broker has initiated an intelligence brokering operation on Illium.

"Williams-Gunnery Chief is currently engaged in a classified operation."

Shepard nodded. "Thank you, Taigun."

Just because he was a Geth didn't mean that she wouldn't appreciate information, and she doubted the Geth had a concept of purposeful misinformation the way organics did, though she could be wrong. Thinking about the Geth from a synthetic perspective rather than an organic perspective gave her a headache.

Fifteen minutes later, the permanent clone of Aurora Shepard officially assumed her station as Yahg Chieftain while the four Tailed Beasts, Taigun, and the original Shepard left the village in a flash of yellow.

Had the few Yahg with uncannily good eyes been looking in the right direction an hour after their departure, they would have been able to spot a sleek, grey vessel lift into the air and vanish into the heavens beyond.

– – – –

**Translations: **

**Japanese:**

**Kage Bunshin: Shadow Clone**

**Doton: Dochū Eigyo; Earth Release: Underground Fish Projection **

**Meisaigakure no Jutsu: Hiding in the Camouflage Technique**

**Tōton no Jutsu: Transparency Escape Technique **

**Shunshin: Body Flicker**

**Karyūken: Sentenashi; Fire Dragon Fist: Whirling Leg (from Senten: Whirling, and Ashi: foot, leg, gait, pace, bottom kanji radical)**

**Chidori: Thousand Birds. Hyakudori, or Hundreds Bird, might be a better name for the version Shep uses in this chapter, though.**

**Ryūsei Kazan: Meteor Volcano. Original Lava Release technique. S-rank. Inspired by Akainu's technique of the same name (from One Piece). User creates a series of vertical magma tubes near the user that rapidly and repeatedly shoot globs of magma into the stratosphere, at which point they hit the apex of their flight path and fall to the earth. Used as both Anti-Air, as with all 'Kazan' techniques, and uniquely as long-range wide-area artillery. Should Tailed-Beast level chakra be used to supply the technique it can theoretically be used as Anti-Orbit artillery.**

**Kheelish: **

**Laera/Laerin: Beloved, male to female and female to male, respectively. Used only for the period between intent declaration and the actual bonds provided the other accepts the intent, the closest human equivalent term is 'fiancée'. Original creation.**

**Keelah Se'lai: By the homeworld I hope to see one day. **

**Kaihar: Captain. Original creation.**

**Yahg: **

**Ch'jaflga: Unit of mass equal to approximately twenty-five Terran kilograms. **

**Kro'fltal: Warrior**

– – – –

**A/N: In case it wasn't clear, the Clone Shepard remaining on Parnack is created by fusing a blood clone (original creation as far as I know, essentially a life-like Water Clone with as much durability as the original) with a shadow clone (for the personality), and then linking the minds of the clone and original to a memory repository located in a pocket dimension created by Naruto. While awake, the seal records neural activity and transmits it to the repository. Whenever either Shepard enters REM sleep, the repository synchronizes with the mind. This allows the original Shepard to follow the developments on Parnack as they occur, though slightly delayed. **

**It wasn't in my original plan for the story, but I can't see Shepard giving up the massive potential the Yahg have as an asset. Who knows, it might come in handy during the Reaper War.**

**By the way, the few words of Yahg language I have were created by – literally – blindly mashing my keyboard and interspersing random spaces and apostrophes. I then changed a few vowels to consonants and vice versa to get a Lovecraftian vibe.**

**Also, yes, the chieftain is 400 kg. **

**The fight between Shepard and the chieftain is pretty epic, in my opinion, but it'll be shown later. As in, when Shepard inevitably lets slip she's now a Chieftain and someone asks how that happened. I didn't want to bloat the chapter to more than 20k words.**

**Next Chapter: Freedom's Progress!**


End file.
